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Y, WASHINGTON, 
























































The Literature of America 

% 

AND 

OUR FAVORITE AUTHORS 

CONTAINING 

THE LIVES OF OUR NOTED AMERICAN AND 
FAVORITE ENGLISH AUTHORS. 

TOGETHER WITH 

CHOICE.SELECTIONS FROM THEIR WRITINGS 


EMBRACING 

THE GREAT POETS OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA, FAMOUS NOVELISTS, DISTINGUISHED ESSAYISTS AND 
HISTORIANS, OUR HUMORISTS, NOTED JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS, STATESMEN 
IN LITERATURE, NOTED WOMEN IN LITERATURE, POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG 
PEOPLE, GREAT ORATORS AND PUBLIC LECTURERS, Etc. 


COMPILED AND EDITED BY 


/ 

WILLIAM WILFRED BIRDSALL, A. B., Principal of Central School, Philadelphia 

^ 11 

RUFUS M. JONES, A. M., Professor of Philosophy, Haverford College, and others 


EMBELLISHED WITH NEARLY 

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY HALF-TONE PORTRAITS 

AND ABOUT 200 TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS 

By Charles Dana Gibson, Corwin K. Linson and Others 


JOHN C. WINSTON & 

PHILADELPHIA CHICAGO 





f'07- 3 ' 

L- 


two canes weunvvin 










fb&l 




3359 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1897, by 

W. E. SCULL, 

in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
All rights reserved. 




AIX PERSONS ARE WARNED NOT TO INFRINGE UPON OUR COPYRIGHT BY USING EITHER THE 


MATTER OR THE PICTURES IN THIS VOLUME. 





GENERAL DEPARTMENTS 


lo 


o 

v 




PART 1. 
“ 2 . 

a 3. 
“ 4. 

“ 5. 

“ 6 . 

“ 7 . 

a 8. 

“ 9. 

“ 10 . 

“ 11. 

“ 12 . 
“ 13. 


Great Poets of America,. 

Our Most Noted Novelists,. 

Famous Women Novelists, . 

Representative Women Poets of America, . 

Well-known Essayists, Critics and Sketch Writers, 

Great American Historians and Biographers, 

Our National Humorists,. 

Popular Writers for Young People, 

Noted Journalists and Magazine Contributors, . 

Great Orators and Popular Lecturers, 

Famous Women Orators and Reformers, 

Miscellaneous Masterpieces and Choice Gems, . 
Seventeen of our Favorite English Authors, 


33 

165 

218 

252 

271 

311 

345 

380 

401 

433 

469 

499 

549 


( 5 ) 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 


Our obligation to the following publishers is respectfully and gratefully acknowledged, since, without the 
courtesies and assistance of these publishers and a number of the living authors, it would have been 
impossible to issue this volume. 

Copyright selections from the following authors are used by the permission of and special arrangement 
with MESSRS. HOUGHTON\ MIFFLIN & CO., their authorized publishersRalph Waldo 
Emerson, Henry W. Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor, Maurice 
Thompson, Colonel John Hay, Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, Edward Bellamy, Charles Egbert 
Craddock (Miss Murfree), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward), Octave Thanet (Miss French), Alice Cary, 
Phoebe Cary, Charles Dudley Warner, E. C. Stedman, James Parton, John Fiske and Sarah Jane Lippincott. 

TO THE CENTURY CO ., we are indebted for selections from Richard Watson Gilder, James 
Whitcomb Riley and Francis Richard Stockton. 

TO CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS , for extracts from Eugene Field. 

TO HARPER Ac BROTHERS , for selections from Will Carleton, General Lew Wallace, W. D. 
Howells, Thomas Nelson Page, John L. Motley, Charles Follen Adams and Lyman Abbott. 

TO ROBERTS BROTHERS , for selections from Edward Everett Hale, Helen Hunt Jackson, 
Louise Chandler Moulton and Louisa M. Alcott. 

TO ORANGE , JUDD (7(9., for extracts from Edward Eggleston. 

TO DODD , MEAD Ac CO., for selections from E. P. Roe, Marion Harland (Mrs. Terhune), Amelia 
E. Barr and Martha Finley. 

TO D. APPLETON Ac CO ., for Wm. Cullen Bryant and John Bach McMaster. 

TO MACMILLAN & CO ., for F. Marion Crawford. 

10 HORACE L. TRAUBEL , Executor, for Walt Whitman. 

TO ESTES Ac LA UR I A T, for Gail Hamilton (Mary Abigail Dodge). 

TO LITTLE , BROWN & CO., for Francis Parkman. 

TO FUNK <fb WAGNALLS, for Josiah Allen’s Wife (Miss Holley). 

TO LEE Ac SHEPARD , for Yawcob Strauss (Charles Follen Adams), Oliver Optic (William T. 
Adams) and Mary A. Livermore. 

TO J. B. LIPPINCOTT Ac CO ., for Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye). 

TO GEORGE ROUTLEDGE <& SONS , for Uncle Remus (Joel C. Harris). 

TO TICKNOR & CO ., for Julian Hawthorne. 

TO PORTER Ac COATES, for Edward Ellis and Horatio Alger. 

TO WILLIAM F. GILL & CO., for Whitelaw Reid. 

TO C. II. HUDGINS & CO ., for Henry W. Grady. 

TO THE “ COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE ,” for Julian Hawthorne. 

TO T. B. PETERSON Ac BROS., for Frances Hodgson Burnett. 

TO JAS. R. OSGOOD Ac CO ., for Jane Goodwin Austin. 

TO GEO. R. SHEPARD, for Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

TO J. LEWIS STACKPOLE, for John L. Motley. 

Besides the above, we are under special obligation to a number of authors'who kindly furnished, in 
answer to our request, selections which they considered representative of their writings. 


6 




THE DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE AND PLAN OF THIS VOLUME. 


HIS work has been designed and prepared with a view to presenting an 
outline of American literature in such a manner as to stimulate a 
love for good reading and especially to encourage the study of the 
lives and writings of our American authors. The plan of this work 
is unique and original, and possesses certain helpful and interesting 
features, which—so far as we are aware—have been contemplated by 
no other single volume. 

The first and main purpose of the work is to present to our American homes a 
mass of wholesome, varied and well-selected reading matter. In this respect it is 
substantially a volume for the family. America is pre-eminently a country of 
homes. These homes are the schools of citizenship, and—next to the Bible, which 
is the foundation of our morals and laws—we need those books which at once enter¬ 
tain and instruct, and, at the same time, stimulate patriotism and pride for our 
native land. 

This book seeks to meet this demand. Four-fifths of our space is devoted ex¬ 
clusively to American literature. Nearly all other volumes of selections are made 
up chiefly from foreign authors. The reason for this is obvious. Foreign publications 
until within the last few years have been free of copyright restrictions. Anything 
might be chosen and copied from them while American authors were protected by 
law from such outrages. Consequently, American material under forty-two years of 
age could not be used without the consent of the owner of the copyright. The 
expense and the difficulty of obtaining these permissions were too great to warrant 
compilers and publishers in using American material. The constantly growing 
demand, however, for a work of this class has encouraged the publishers of this 

7 





































8 


THE DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE AND PLAN OF THIS VOLUME. 


volume to undertake the task. The publishers of the works from which these selec¬ 
tions are made and many living authors represented have been corresponded with, 
and it is only through the joint courtesy and co-operation of these many publishers 
and authors that the production of this volume has been made possible. Due 
acknowledgment will be found elsewhere. In a number of instances the selections 
have been made by the authors themselves, who have also rendered other valu¬ 
able assistance in supplying data and photographs. 

The second distinctive point of merit in the plan of the work is the biographical 
feature, which gives the story of each author’s life separately, treating them both 
personally and as writers. Longfellow remarked in “ Hyperion ”—“ If you once 
understand the character of an author the comprehension of his writings becomes 
easy.” He might have gone further and stated that when we have once read the 
life of an author his writings become the more interesting. Goethe assures us that 
“ Every author portrays himself in his works even though it be against his will.” 
The patriarch in the Scriptures had the same thought in his mind when he exclaimed 
“ Oh ! that mine enemy had written a book.” Human nature remains the same. 
Any book takes on a new phase of value and interest to us the moment we know 
the story of the writer, whether we agree with his statements and theories or not. 
These biographical sketches, which in every case are placed immediately before the 
selections from an author, give, in addition to the story of his life, a list of the 
principal books he has written, and the dates of publication, together with com¬ 
ments on his literary style and in many instances reviews of his best known works. 
This, with the selections which follow, established that necessary bond of sympathy 
and relationship which should exist in the mind of the reader between every author 
and his writings. Furthermore, under this arrangement the biography of each 
author and the selections from his works compose a complete and independent 
chapter in the volume, so that the writer may be taken up and studied or read alone, 
or in connection with others in the particular class to which he belongs. 

This brings us to the third point of classification. Other volumes of selections 
—where they have been classified at all—have usually placed selections of similar 
character together under the various heads of Narrative and Descriptive, Moral and 
Religious, Historical, etc. On the contrary, it has appeared to us the better plan 
in the construction of this volume to classify the authors, rather than, by dividing 
their selections, scatter the children of one parent in many different quarters. 
There has been no small difficulty in doing this in the cases of some of our versatile 
writers. Emerson, for instance, with his poetry, philosophy and essays, and Holmes, 
with his wit and humor, his essays, his novels and his poetry. Where should they 
be placed ? Summing them up, we find their writings—whether written in stanzas 
of metred lines or all the way across the page, and whether they talked philosophy 
or indulged in humor—were predominated by the spirit of poetry. Therefore, 
with their varied brood, Emerson and Holmes were taken off to the “ Poet’s 
Corner,” which is made all the richer and more enjoyable by the variety of their 
gems of prose. Hence our classifications and groupings are as Poets fNovelists, 
Historians, Journalists, Humorists, Essayists , Critics, Orators, etc., placing each 
author in the department to which he most belongs, enabling the reader to read and 
compare him in his best element with others of the same class. 



THE DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE AND PLAN OF THIS VOLUME. 


9 


Part /., “ Great Poets of America ,” comprises twenty of our most famous and 
popular writers of verse. The work necessarily begins with that immortal “ Seven 
Stars” of poesy in the galaxy of our literary heavens—Bryant, Poe, Longfel¬ 
low, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes and Lowell. Succeeding these are those of 
esser magnitude, many of whom are still living and some who have won fame 
j n other fields of literature which divides honors with their poetry. 

The remaining twelve parts of the book treat in similar manner about ninety-five 
'additional authors, embracing noted novelists, representative women poets ofAmerica; 
ssayists, critics and sketch writers ; great American historians and biographers; 
ur national humorists; popular writers for young people; noted journalists and 
aagazine contributors ; great orators and popular lecturers ; famous women orators 
nd reformers, and miscellaneous masterpieces from many American authors whose 
ame rests largely upon one or two productions. The work appropriately closes with 
a department of over one hundred and fifty pages of English literature, comprising 
the lives and best writings of the most famous English, Scotch and Irish authors, 
whose names and works are household words in America, and without which no 
volume of literature in the language would be complete. Thus, it will be seen that 
in this volume the whole field of American letters, with the best from the greatest 
of British authors, has been gleaned to make the work the best and most represen¬ 
tative of our literature possible within the scope of a single volume. 

In making a list of authors in whom the public were sufficiently interested to 
entitle them to a place in a work like this, naturally they were found to be entirely 
too numerous to be all included in one book. The absence of many good names 
from the volume is, therefore, explained by the fact that the editor has been driven 
to the necessity of selecting, first, those whom he deemed pre-eminently prominent, 
and, after that, making room for those who best represent a certain class or par¬ 
ticular phase of our literature. 

To those authors who have so kindly responded to our requests for courtesies, 
and whose names do not appear, the above explanation is offered. The omission 
was imperative in order that those treated might be allowed sufficient space to make 
the work as complete and representative as might be reasonably expected. 

Special attention has been given to illustrations. We have inserted portraits of 
all the authors whose photographs we could obtain, and have, also, given views of the 
homes and studies of many. A large number of special drawings have also been 
made to illustrate the text of selections. The whole number of portraits and other 
illustrations amount to over three hundred, all of which are strictly illustrative of 
the authors or their writings. None are put in as mere ornaments. We have, 
furthermore, taken particular care to arrange a number of special groups, placing 
those authors which belong in one class or division of a class together on a page. 
One group on a page represents our greatest poets; another, well-known western 
poets; another, famous historians; another, writers for young people; another, 
American humorists, etc. These groups are all arranged by artists in various 
designs of ornamental setting. In many cases we have also had special designs 
made by artists for commemorative and historic pictures of famous authors. These 
drawings set forth in a pictorial form leading scenes in the life and labors of the 
author represented. 



LIST OF PORTRAITS 

MADE EXPRESSLY FOR THIS VOLUME. 


ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY. 


Abbott, Lyman. 

Adams, Charles Follen (Yawcob Strauss). 
Adams, William T. (Oliver Optic). 
Alcott, A. Bronson. 

Alcott, Louisa M. 

Alger, Horatio, Jr. 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey. 

Anthony, Susan B. 

Austin, Alfred. 

Austin, Jane Goodwin. 

Bancroft, George H. 

Barr, Amelia E. 

Beecher, Henry Ward. 

Bellamy, Edward. 

Bright, John. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. 

Browning, Robert. 

Bryant, William Cullen. 

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. 

Burdette, Robert J. 

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. 

Burns, Robert. 

Byron, George Gordon. 

Cable, George W. 

Carleton, Will 
Carlyle, Thomas. 

Cary, Alice. 

Cary, Phoebe. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey. 

Clay, Henry. 

Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain). 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 

Cooper, James Fenimore. 

Cowper, William. 


Craddock, Charles Egbert (Mrs. Murfree). 
Crawford, F. Marion. 

Dana, Charles A. 

Davis, Richard Harding. 

Depew, Chauncey M. 

Dickens, Charles. 

Dickinson, Anna. 

Disraeli, Benjamin. 

Drummond, Henry. 

Eggleston, Edward. 

Eliot, George (Marian Evans). 

Ellis, Edward S. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 

Everett, Edward. 

Farrar, Frederick W. 

Field, Eugene. 

Finley, Martha. 

French, Alice (Octave Thanet). 

Froude, James Anthony. 

Fuller, Margaret. 

Gibbon. Edward. 

Gilder, Richard Watson. 

Gladstone, William E. 

Goldsmith, Oliver. 

Gough, John B. 

Grady, Henry W. 

Greelej 7 , Horace. 

Hale, Edward Everett. 

Halstead, Murat. 

Harris, Joel Chandler. 

Harte, Bret. 






LIST OF PORTRAITS MADE EXPRESSLY FOR THIS VOLUME. 


11 


Hawthorne, Nathaniel. 

Hawthorne, Julian, 
llay, Col. John. 

Hemans, Felicia. 

Henry, Patrick. 

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell. 

Howells, William Dean. 

Howe, Julia Ward. 

Irving, Washington. 

Jackson, Helen Hunt. 

Johnson, Ben. 

Larcom, Lucy. 

Lippincott, Sara Jane (Grace Greenwood). 
Livermore, Mary A. 

Lockwood, Belva Ann. 

Longfellow, Henry W. 

Lowell, James Russell. 

Mabie, Hamilton W. 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington. 

McMaster, John B. 

Miller, Joaquin. 

Milton, John. 

Mitchell, Donald G. (Ik Marvel). 

Moore, Thomas. 

Motley, John L. 

Moulton, Louise Chandler. 

Nye, Edgar Wilson (Bill Nye). 

Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret. 

Page, Thomas Nelson. 

Part on, James. 

Phillips, Wendell. 

Pitt, William. 

Poe, Edgar A. 

Pope, Alexander. 


Prescott, Wiliam H. 

Reid, Whitelaw. 

Riley, James Whitcomb. 

Roe, Edward Payson. 

Ruskin, John. 

Scott, Sir Walter. 

Shakespeare, William. 

Shaw, Albert. 

Shaw, Henry W. (Josh Billings). 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 

Southey, Robert. 

Sigourney, Lydia H. 

Smith, Elizabeth Oakes. 

Spencer, Edmund. 

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence. 

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. 

Stockton, Frank. 

Stoddard, Richard Henry. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. 

Tennyson, Alfred. 

Terhune, Mary Virginia (Marion Harland). 
Thackerav, William M. 

Thoreau, Henry D. 

Throllope, Anthony. 

Wallace, General Lew. 

Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 

Ward, Mrs. Humphrey. 

Warner, Chas. Dudlej^. 

Watson, Rev. John (Ian McLaren). 
Watterson, Henry W. 

Webster, Daniel. 

Whitman, Walt. 

Whittier, John G. 

Willard, Frances E. 

Willis, Nathaniel P. 

Wordsworth, William. 



LIST OF ENGRAVINGS 

MADE EXPRESSLY TO ILLUSTRATE THE TEXT IN THIS VOLUME. 


PAGE 


American Authors. 11 

The Poets of New England. 14 

The Village Smithy. 31 

Corn-shucking in South Carolina. 44 

The City in the Sea. 49 

Helen. 51 

The Raven. 55 

The Wayside Inn. 59 

“ They Love to See the Flaming Forge ”. 62 

Home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord, Mass. 73 
Home of James R. Lowell, Cambridge, Mass... 101 

Thomas B. Aldrich’s Study. 131 

Joaquin Miller’s Study, Oakland, Cal. 161 

The Old Manse. 174 

Uncle Tom and His Baby. 219 

A Scene in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 221 

Miss Ophelia and Topsy. 223 

Sunnyside, the Home of Washington Irving.... 272 

“ ‘ Pshaw !’ said My Aunt Tabitha ”. 286 

“ Isaac, You are a Sad Fellow ! ”. 286 

‘ ‘ My Aunt was Dozing ”. 287 

“The Justice of the Peace ”. 287 

“A Perfect Field of Chivalry ’’. 288 

“Tricked Out”. 288 

“ There is After All But One Youth-time ”. 288 

“Long, Weary Days of Confinement”. 289 

“ Startling Another from a Doze ”. 289 

“And Eat a Dinner in a Tavern ”. 290 

“Away on a Visit in a Coach ”. 290 

“It is Rather a Pretty Name to Write ”. 290 

“The Doctor Lifts You in His Arms ”. 291 

“Who Sometimes Makes You Stand Up To¬ 
gether”. 291 

“Listening Attentively to Some Grievous Com¬ 
plaint”. 292 

“ Some of Bidlow's Boys ”. 292 

“A Squire ”. 293 

“ Some Tidy Old Lady in Black ”. 293 

The Choir. 294 


PAGE 


“ Fat Old Ladies in Iron Spectacles ”. 294 

The Deacon.-. 295 

“ In Tones of Tender Admonition ”. 295 

“The Old Men Gather on the Sunny Side of the 

Building”. 295 

“The Firelight Glimmers Upon the Walls of 

Your Home ”. 296 

On the Farm in Canada. 300 

The Old Well-curb.. 301 

Immigrant Women Hoeing Potatoes. 301 

Waiting for Milking-time. 302 

After Work. 302 

A Winter Evening on the Farm. 303 

Sunday Afternoon. 30J 

Churning in the Barn. 304 

A Sunny Play-ground. 304 

The Old Mill. 304 

After a Wet Snow-storm. 305 

Maple-sugar Time. 305 

The Black Sheep. 306 

Noon in the Sheep-lot. 30( 

The Mill Pond. 30( 

Feeding the Chickens. 301 

Picking Daisies. 301 

Making Friends. 301 

Mr. Prescott’s House at Pepperett, Mass. 321 

Henry Hudson Offering the Indians Liquor. 37( 

A Cottonfield in Louisiana. 421 

Daniel Webster’s Home, Marshfield, Mass. 44 

“The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney 

with Care”. 50, 

“A Miniature Sleigh and Eight Reindeer”. 50- 

“Down the Chimney came St. Nicholas”. 50- 

The Tourist. 52 

At the Lunch Stand. 52 

The Street to the Sea. 52 

The Oiler. 52 

In Wait. 52 

Expecting a Caller. 52 














































































ENGRAVINGS MADE EXPRESSLY FOR THIS VOLUME. 


13 


A Veteran of the Ranks. 

A Wide-reaching Affair. 

“ Who’s That Coming ? ”. 

Leisure. 

McClellan’s Saddle. 

“ Gracious Goodness ! ”. 

Shooting the Steam Arrow. 

On Wings of Hoofs..... 

Miniature Men and Women. 

Waiting Orders. 

Bon Voyage. 

A Follower of the Hounds. 

Confidences. 

A Tete-Ytete. 

Argument. 

An American Girl. 

Le Nez Parisien. 

Problems. 

In the Park. 

A World’s Fair Group. 

“A Cosy Sit Down over Oysters and Champagne” 
“ Madge,” she says, “ is sitting by me with her 

Work”. 

“Digging Sturdily at his Tasks ”. 

“ Upon the Grassy Bank of a Stream ”. 

“ He Wears his Honor at the Public Tables ” .. 

“ The Moonlit Walks Upon the Hills ”. 

“We are Quite Alone, Now, My Boy”. 

“ Death—It is a Terrible Word ”. 

“ Plump and Thriving ”. 

“ Read It Again ”. 

“You Put Your Hands in Your Pockets and 

Look Out Upon the Tossing Sea” . 

“ Blue-eyed Madge ”. 

“ The Old Clergyman Sleeps Beneath a Brown- 

stone Slab ”. 

“You Love Those Flowers ”. 

“ And You Have Worn This, Maggie ?”. 

“A Father!” . 

Your Country Home. 

“ The Time of Power is Past ”. 

“ Madge, Madge, Must It Be ?”. 

That is it, Maggie, the Old Home. 

A New Betrothal. 

“It is Getting Dark, Maggie ”... 

Celebrated English Poets. 

Souvenir of Shakespeare. 

Ann Hathaway’s Cottage. 


PAGB 

Garrick and Shakespeare’s Bust. 551 

Fountain and Clock Tower Erected by George W. 

Childs at Stratford-on-Avon. 552 

Shakespeare’s House, Stratford-on-Avon. 554 

“ In a Cowslip’s Bell I Lie ”. 556 

“ Come Apace, Good Audrey ; I will Fetch up 

Your Goats, Audrey ”. 558 

“ There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook ”... 560 

Othello’s Wooing. 564 

“From Betwixt Two Aged Oakes”—L’Allegro. 569 
Gray’s Monument in the Churchyard at Stoke 

Bogis. 573 

Souvenir of Burns. 575 

“ The De’il Cam Fiddlin’ Thro’ the Town ” .... 576 

“Wilt Thou be My Dearie ? ”. 577 

Man was Made to Mourn. 578 

“ The Smith and Thee Got Roarin’ Foil ”. 579 

“ The Sire Turns O'er Wi’ Patriarchal Grace ” . 581 

The Ancient Mariner. 585 

‘ 1 He Cannot Chuse but Hear ”. 586 

“A Speck, A Mist, A Shape, I Wist! ”. 588 

The Mariner.Is Gone. 590 

“ Oh, God ! That Bread Should be so Dear ”... 593 

“ Take Her Up Tenderly, Lift Her With Care ” 595 

The Tomb of Wordsworth. 597 

“ Out Flew the Web, and Floated Wide ”. 604 

“An Arm Rose Up from Out the Bosom of the 

Lake”. 606 

“ The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls ”. 607 

.Souvenir of Scott. 614 

Scott’s Study at Abbottsford. 615 

Melrose Abbey. 617 

Kenilworth Castle. 619 

Souvenir of Dickens. 625 

Birthplace of Dickens, Portsmouth, England... 626 

Gadshill, the Home of Charles Dickens. 627 

“ Mr. Pickwick was the Personification of Kind¬ 
ness and Humanity”. 629 

Captain Cuttle. 631 

Dicken’s “ Old Curiosity Shop ”. 633 

Mr. Micawber. 634 

Sam Weller. 636 

Major Pendennis. 639 

Becky Sharp. 644 

Colonel Newcome.*. 645 

Gladstone’s Study. 663 

Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, their Children and 

Grandchildren. 665 


PAGE 

526 

526 

526 

526 

527 

527 

527 

527 

528 

528 

528 

531 

532 

532 

533 

533 

534 

535 

536 

536 

537 

538 

538 

539 

539 

540 

540 

540 

541 

541 

541 

542 

542 

543 

543 

544 

544 

545 

545 

546 

546 

546 

547 

549 

550 




















































































FULL-PAGE GROUPS 


AND SPECIAL DESIGNS. 


Edgar Allan Poe—H is Home, Monument, etc. 

Interior of Longfellow’s Home, Cambridge, Mass. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson— His Brook Farm Friends, etc. 
John G. Whittier— His Home and Birthplace. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes—H is Birthplace and Study. 
James Russell Lowell in His Study. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne—H is Birthplace, Wayside Inn, etc. 
The New Congressional Library. 

Six Great American Poets. 

Well-known American Poets. 

Well-known Western Poets. 

Six Typical American Novelists. 

Popular American Novelists.. 

Noted Women Novelists. 

Women Poets of America. 

Distinguished Essayists and Literary Critics. 

Great American Historians and Biographers. 

Our National Humorists. 

Popular Writers for Young People. 

Noted American Journalists and Magazine Contributors. 
Great American Orators and Popular Lecturers. 

Famous Women Orators and Reformers. 

The Great Poets of England. 

William Shakespeare, Special Design.' 

Robert Burns, Special Design. 

The Great Poets of England. 

The Great Poets of England. 

Great English Historians and Prose Writers. 

Famous English Novelists. 

English Statesmen in Literature. 

Writers of Religious Classics. 

Noted English women in Literature. 

14 




TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


P AOT? 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

An Author at Fourteen. 33 

The Influence of his Father. 34 

Bryant’s Best Known Poems. 35 

Personal Appearance. 35 

A Long and Useful Life. 35 

‘Thanatopsis ’. 36 

‘Waiting By the Gate ’. 36 

‘ Blessed are They That Mourn ’. 37 

‘ Antiquity of Freedom ’. 38 

‘ To a Water Fowl ’. 38 

‘Robert of Lincoln'*. 39 

‘ Drought ’.. 39 

‘ The Past ’. 40 

‘ The Murdered Traveler ’. 40 

‘ The Battle-Field ’. 41 

‘ The Crowded Street ’. 42 

‘Fitz Greene Halleck (Notice of) ’. 42 

‘A Corn-Shucking in South Carolina’. 43 

EDGAR ALLEN POE. 

Comparison with Other American Poets.... 45 

Place of Birth and Ancestry. 45 

Career as a Student. 46 

The Sadness of his Life and Its Influence 

Upon his Literature. 46 

Conflicting Statements of his Biographers.. 47 

Great as a Story Writer and as a Poet. 47 

His Literary Labors and Productions. 48 

‘The City in the Sea ’. 49 

‘ Annabel Lee ’. 50 

‘ To Helen ’. 50 

‘ Israfel ’. 52 

‘To One in Paradise ’. 52 

‘Lenore’. 53 

‘The Bells’. 53 

‘ The Raven ’. 55 


HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 
His Place in Literature. 


Comparison With American and English 


Poets. 58 

His Education, Collegemates and Home.... 59 

The Wayside Inn (A view of). 59 

His Domestic Life. His Poems. 60 

His Critics, Poe, Margaret Fuller, Duj^ckink 61 

Prose Works and Translations. 61 

Longfellow’s Genius. 61 

‘ The Psalm of Life ’. 61 

‘ The Village Blacksmith ’. 62 

‘The Bridge’. 63 

‘Resignation’. 63 

‘God's Acre’. 64 

‘ Excelsior ’. 64 

‘ The Rainy Day ’. 65 

‘ The Wreck of the Hesperus ’. 65 

‘ The Old Clock On the Stairs ’. 66 

‘ The Skeleton in Armour ’. 67 

4 King Witlaf ’s Drinking Horn ’. 69 

‘ Evangeline On the Prairie ’. 69 

‘ Literary Fame (Prose) ’.*. 70 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

The Difficulty of Classifying Emerson. 71 

The Liberator of American Letters. 71 

A Master of Language. 72 

Emerson and Franklin. 72 

Birth, Education, Early Life. 72 

Home at Concord, Brook-Farm Enterprise.. 73 

Influence on Other Writers. 74 

Modern Communism and the New Theology 74 
‘ Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Con¬ 
cord Monument (1836) ’. 75 

‘TheRhodora’. 75 

‘ A True Hero ’. 75 

‘ Mountain and Squirrel ’. 76 

‘The Snow-Storm’. 76 

‘The Problem’. 76 

‘Traveling’. 77 


58 

15 








































































16 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


‘ The Compensation of Calamity ’. 78 

‘ Self Reliance ’. 78 

‘Nature’. 78 


JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Whittier’s Humble Birth, Ancestry, Education.80 


Poet of the Abolitionists. 81 

His Poems and His Prose. 81 

Our Most Distinctively American Poet. 82 

New England's History Embalmed in Verse 82 

‘My Playmate’. 83 

‘The Changeling ’. 83 

‘ The Workskip of Nature ’. 85 

‘ The Bare-foot Boy ’. 85 

‘ Maud Muller ’. 86 

‘ Memories ’. 87 

‘ In Prison For Debt ’. 88 

‘The Storm’ (From ‘ Snow Bound’). 89 

‘ Ichabod '. 90 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

Admired by the English-speaking World... 91 

His Education and Popularity. 91 

Early Poems. 92 

Autocrat and Professor at the Breakfast 

Table. 92 

Holmes’ Genial and Lovable Nature. 92 

‘ Bill and Joe ’. 94 

‘ Union and Liberty ’. 94 

‘ Old Ironsides ’. 95 

‘My Aunt’. 95 

‘ The Height of the Ridiculous ’. 95 

‘ The Chambered Nautilus ’. 96 

‘ Old Age and the Professor ’ (Prose). 96 

‘ The Brain ’ (Prose). 97 

‘ My Last Walk with the School Mistress ’. 97 

‘ A Random Conversation on Old Maxims, 

Boston and other Towns ’. 98 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 


Profoundest of American Poets. ]00 

Early Life and Beginning in Literature .... 100 

Marriage, and the Influence of his Wife... 101 

Home at Cambridge (view of). 101 

Longfellow’s Poem on Mrs. Lowell’s Death, 101 

Humorous Poems and Prose Writings. 102 

Public Career of the Author. 103 

How Lowell is Regarded by Scholars. 103 

‘The Gothic Genius’ (From ‘TheCathedral ’) 104 


PAGB 

‘The Rose’. 104 

‘ The Heritage ’. 105 

‘Act For Truth’. 106 

‘ The First Snow-Fall ’. 106 

‘ Fourth-of-July Ode ’. 107 

‘ The Dandelion ’. 107 

‘The Alpine Sheep' (by Mrs. Lowell). 108 

BAYARD TAYLOR. 

Life as a Farmer Boy. 109 

Education. 109 

His First Book. 109 

Encouragement from Horace Greeley. 109 

A Two Years’ Tramp Through Europe- 109 

A Most Delightful Book of Travel. 109 

An Inveterate Nomad. 109 

Public Career of the Author. 110 

‘ The Bison Track . 110 

‘The Song of the Camp ’. Ill 

‘ Bedouin Song ’. Ill 

‘ The Arab to the Palm ’. Ill 

‘ Life on the Nile ’. 112 

NATHANIEL P. WILLIS. 

A Devotee of Fashion. 114 

Birth and Ancestors. 114 

Educational Facilities. 114 

H is First Poems. 114 

A Four Years’ Tour in Europe. 115 

Marriage and Home.'.. 115 

A Second Journey to England. 115 

An Untiring Worker. 115 

Death. 115 

‘ David’s Lament for Absalom ’. 116 

‘ The Dying Alchemist ’.-. 117 

‘The Belfry Pigeon ’. 118 


RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

His Humble Origin and Early Struggles... 119 

Introduction into Literature. 119 

Stoddard’s Style. 120 

Literary Dinner in His Honor (1892). 120 

Ik. Marvel’s Letter and Whitcomb Riley’s 

Poem. 120 

‘ A Curtain Call ’. 121 

‘ Hymn to the Beautiful ’. 121 

‘A Dirge’. 122 

‘ The Shadow of the Hand ’. 123 

‘A Serenade’. 123 













































































CONTENTS. 


17 


PAGE 


WALTER WHITMAN (WALT). 

The Estimates of Critics. 124 

Charms of Whitman’s Poetry. 125 

Life and Works of the Poet. 125 

Biographies of the Poet. 125 

‘ Barest Thou Now, 0 Soul ’. 126 

‘ 0 Captain ! My Captain ’. 126 

‘ In All, Myself’.. J26 

‘ Old Ireland ’. 127 

‘Paean of Joy’. 127 

JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON. 

Birth and Early Life. 128 

A Thorough Southerner. 128 

Man of Letters and Scientist. ]28 

Chief of the State Geological Survey. 128 

W r orks of the Author. 128 

‘ Ceres ’. 129 

‘Diana'. 129 


THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

At the Head of Modern Lyrical Writers_ 130 

Birth and Early Life. 130 

Mercantile Career. 130 

War Correspondent. 130 

Life in Boston... 130 

Works. 130 

Visit to England. 131 

‘Alec Yeaton’s Son ’. 132 

‘ On Lynn Terrace ’. 132 

‘Sargent’s Portrait of Edwin Booth at 

“The Players.’”. 133 

RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 

Purit} 7 of Sentiment and Delicacy of Ex¬ 
pression . 134 

Education and Early Life. 134 

Journalist. 134 

Editor of “ Hours at Home ”. 134 

Politician and Reformer. 135 

A Staunch Friend of our Colleges. 135 

A Man of Exalted Ideals. 135 

‘ Sonnet (After the Italian) ’. 136 

‘The Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln ’. 136 

‘Sheridan’. 136 

‘ Sunset From the Train ’. 137 

4 O Silver River Flowing to the Sea ’. 137 

‘There is Nothing New Under the Sun ’.... 137 

‘ Memorial Day ’. 138 

* A Woman’s Thought'. 138 

2 


PAGE 


JOHN HAY. 

His Western Birth and Education. 139 

Service to President Lincoln. 139 

Military Career. 139 

Appointed Ambassador to Great Britain- 139 

A List of His Books. 139 

How He Came to Write “ Little Breeches ” 140 

‘ Little Breeches ’. 140 

‘ Jim Bludso ’.. 141 

‘ How it Happened ’. 141 

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. 

Great Popularity with the Masses. 143 

A Poet of the Country People. 143 

Birth and Education. 144 

First Occupation. 144 

Congratulated by Longfellow. 144 

Mr. Riley’s Methods of Work. 144 

The Poet’s Home. 145 

Constantly “ on the Wing ”. 145 

‘A Boy’s Mother ’. 145 

‘ Thoughts on the Late War ’. 145 

‘Our Hired Girl’. 146 

‘The Raggedy Man ’. 146 

BRET HARTE. 

The Poet of the Mining Camp. 147 

Birth and Education. 147 

Emigrated to California. 147 

Schoolteacher and Miner. 147 

Position on a Frontier Paper. 147 

Editorial Position on the “ Golden Era ’’ .. 147 

Secretary of the U. S. Mint at San Francisco. 148 

In Chicago and Boston. 148 

U. S. Consul to Crefield and Glasgow. 148 

A List of his V r orks. 149 

‘ The Society Upon the Stanislaus ’. 149 

‘ Dickens in Camp ’. 150 

EUGENE FIELD. 

The “ Poet of Child Life ”. 151 

Troups of Children for his Friends. 151 

Peace-maker Among the Small Ones. 151 

A Feast with his Little Friends. 151 

A Devoted Husband. 151 

Congenial Association with hisFellow-workers 152 

Birth and Early Life. 152 

His Works. 152 

‘ Our Two Opinions ’. 153 

‘ Lullaby ’. 153 

‘A Dutch Lullaby ’. 153 

‘A Norse Lullaby ’. 154 



















































































IS 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


WILL CARLETON. 

His Poems Favorites for Recitation. 155 

Birth and Early Life. 155 

Teacher, Farmhand and College Graduate.. 155 

Journalist and Lecturer. 155 

A List of his Works. 156 

‘ Betsy and I Are Out ’. 156 

‘ Gone With a Handsomer Man ’. 157 

CINCINNATUS HINER MILLER (JOAQUIN). 

Removal from Indiana to Oregon. 160 

Experiences in Mining and Filibustering ... 160 

M arries and Becomes Editor and Lawyer... 160 

Visit to London to Seek a Publisher. 161 

‘Thoughts of My Western Home ’. 162 

‘Mount S hasta ’. 162 

‘ Kit Carson’s Ride ’. 163 

‘J. Miller’s Alaska Letter’. 164 

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 

First American Novelist. 165 

Birth and Childhood. 165 

The Wilderness his Teacher. 165 

Sailor Life. 166 

Marriage and Home. 166 

“The Spy”. 166 

Plaudits From Both Sides of the Atlantic... 166 

The First Genuine Salt-water Novel. 167 

Removal to New York. 167 

A Six Years’ Visit to Europe. 167 

His Remaining Nineteen Years. 168 

‘ Encounter With a Panther ’. 169 

‘ The Capture of a Whale ’. 171 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

The Greatest of American Romancers. 173 

Birth, Ancestors, and Childhood. 173 

Twelve Years of Solitary Existence. 173 

His First Book. 174 

“Twice Told Tales ”. 174 

A Staunch Democrat. 175 

Marriage and the “ Old Manse ”. 175 

The Masterpiece in American Fiction. 175 

Books Written by Hawthorne. 176 

Death and Funeral. 176 

‘ Emerson and the Emersonites ’. 177 

‘Pearl’. 177 

‘ Sights From a Steeple ’. 179 

‘ A Reminiscence of Early Life ’. 179 


PAGE 


EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

/ 

Among the Best Known American Authors 181 

A Noted Lecturer. 181 

Birth and Education. 181 

Career as a Clergyman. 181 

Newspaper and Magazine V ork. . 181 

A Prominent Short-Story-teller. 182 

An Historical Writer of Great Prominence. 182 

Patriotic Interest in Public Affairs. 182 

‘Lost’. 182 


WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 

One of the Greatest of Modern American 


Novelists. 184 

Birth and Early Life. 184 

Editor of the “ Ohio State Journal ”. 184 

His First Volume of Averse. 184 

His “ Life of Abraham Lincoln ”. 184 

Consul to A^enice. 184 

Mr. Howells’ AA r orks. 185 

Editor of the “Atlantic Monthly ”. 185 

‘ The First Boarder ’. 186 

‘ Impressions on Visiting Pompeii'. 187 

‘ A r enetian A^agabonds ’. 188 


GENERAL LEW AV ALL ACE. 


Began His Literary Career Late in Life- 189 

Birth and Early Life. 189 

Lawyer and Soldier. 189 

Governor of Utah. 189 

Appointed Minister to Turkey. 189 

His Most Popular Book. 190 

Enormous Circulation.:. 190 

‘Description of Christ’. 190 

‘ The Prince of India Teaches Re-incarnation ’ 190 

‘ The Prayer of the AA T andering Jew ’. 191 

‘ Death of Montezuma ’. 191 

‘ Description of A r irgin Mary’. 192 

EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

Birth and Early Life. 193 

A Man of Self-culture. 1 93 

His Early Training. 193 

Religious Devotion and Sacrifice. 194 

Beginning of his Literary Career. 194 

AA 7 hat Distinguishes his Novels. 194 

List of his Chief Novels and Stories. 194 

‘ Spelling down the Master ’. 195 












































































CONTENTS. 


19 


THOMAS NELSON PAGE. 

Birth and Earliest Recollections. 

Childhood, Ancestors, and Education. 

His First Literary Success. 

“ In Ole Virginia ” and other stories. 

Prominent Journalist and Lecturer. 

A Tour Abroad. 

‘Old Sue’. 

EDWARD PAYSON ROE. 

Great Popularity Among the Masses. 

The Character of his Novels. 

Birth and Education. 

Served as Chaplain During the Civil War . 

List of His Works. 

‘Christine, Awake For Your Life’. 

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 

“The Most Versatile of Modern Novelists”. 

Birth, Ancestors, and Early Life. 

Editor on the “Allahabad Herald ”. 

Varied Experiences. 

How he Came to Write “ Mr. Isaacs ”. 

H is Most Popular Novels. 

A Novel Written in Twenty-four Hours- 

His Other Chief Works. 

‘ Horace Bellingham ’. 

‘ In the Himalayas ’. 

FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 

A Prolific and Popular Author. 

Birth and Educational Training. 

Engraver and Designer. 

One New Book Almost Every Year. 

Some of his Best Known Books. 

‘ The End of a Career ’. 

EDWARD BELLAMY. 

A Most Remarkable Sensation. 

100,000 Copies Per Year. 

Mr. Belamy’s Ideal. 

Birth and Education. 

His Books. 

An Ideal Home. 

‘ Music in the Year 2000 ’. 

GEORGE W. CABLE. 

“ Circumstances Make the Man ”. 

Birth and Early Life. 

Service in the Confederate Army. 

Errand Boy in a Store. 


PAGE 

198 

198 

198 

198 

199 
199 
199 


201 

201 

201 

201 

201 

202 


204 

204 

204 

204 

204 

205 
205 

205 

206 
206 


207 

207 

207 

207 

207 

208 


211 

211 

211 

211 

211 

212 

212 


214 

214 

214 

214 


PAGE 


On the “ New Orleans Picayune”. 214 

Devotes his Life to Literature. 215 

His Most Prominent Works. 215 

‘The Doctor’. 215 


HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 

Ancestors, Birth, and Girlhood 

Removal to Cincinnati. 

A Trip Across the River. 

Marriage. 

Severe Trials. 

A Memorable Year. 

“ Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. 

Her Pen Never Idle. 

Removal to Hartford, Conn... . 

Her Death. 

‘ The Little Evangelist ’. 

‘ The Other World ’. 


M. VIRGINIA TERHUNE (MARION 
HARLAND). 

Wide Variety of Talent. 226 

Birth and Education. 226 

Marriage and Home. 226 

Her Most Prominent Works. 226 

‘ A Manly Hero ’. 227 

MARY ABIGAIL DODGE (GAIL HAMILTON). 

Essayist, Critic and Novelist. 228 

Birth and Education. 228 

Career as a Writer. 228 

Her Published Volumes. 228 

The Only Authorized Life of J. G. Blaine.. 229 
‘ Fishing ’. 229 


HELEN HUNT JACKSON. 

Helen Hunt’s Cabin. 

Birth and Education. 

Marriage and Removal to Newport, R. I. .. 

Her First Poems.. 

Great Distinction as a Writer. 

Removal to Colorado. 

At the Foot of Pike’s Peak. 

List of her Most Prominent Works. 

Death and Burial Place. 

‘ Christmas Night at St. Peter’s. 

‘ Choice of Colors ’. 


FRANCES H. BURNETT. 

Pluck, Energy and Perseverance. 235 

Her First Story. 235 


231 

231 

231 

232 
232 
232 
232 
232 
232 

232 

233 


218 

218 

218 

218 

219 

219 

220 
221 
221 
221 
222 
225 
















































































20 


CONTENTS. 


Marriage and Tour in Europe. 

Her Children Stories. 

A Frequent Contributor to Periodicals. 

‘ Pretty Polly P. ’. 

MARY N. MURFREE (CHAS. EGBERT 
CRADDOCK). 

An Amusing Story. 

Birth, Ancestry and Misfortunes. 

A Student of Humanity. 

Her Style Bold and Full of Humor. 

1 The Confession ’. 

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. 

Favorable Reception of “ Gates Ajar !”- 

An Early Writer. 

A Long Series of Books. 

Marriage and Home. 

Her Purpose Always High. 

‘ The Hands at Hayle and Kelso’s ’. 

AMELIA E. BARR. 

Popularity of her Works. 

Her Sorrows and Hardships. 

Birth and Early Education. 

Marriage and Travels. 

Death of her Husband and Four Sons. 

An Instantly Successful Book. 

‘ Little Jan’s Triumph ’. 

1 The Old Piano ’. 

ALICE FRENCH (OCTAVE THANET). 

A Genuine Yankee Woman. 

Her Puritan Ancestry. 

Education and First Manuscript. 

Her First Book. 

Her Most Prominent Publications. 

Her nom-de-plume. 

Philosopher, Artist and Novelist. 

An Assiduous Student of her Subjects. 

‘ Two Lost and Found ’. 

JANE GOODWIN AUSTIN. 

A Famous Daughter of the “ Pilgrims ”... 

Birth and Parents. 

A List of her Best Books. 

Her Personality. 

An Afternoon in Nantucket ’. 

LYDIA IT. SIGOURNEY. 

The Most Prolific of American Women 
Writers. 


PAGE 

Critical Estimate of her Works. 252 

Birth and Educational Advantages. 252 

Her First Book. 253 

Some of her Other Works. 253 

A Tour of Europe. 253 

Death. 253 

‘ Columbus ’. 254 

‘ The Alpine Flowers ’. 254 

‘Niagara’. 254 

‘ Death of an Infant ’. 255 

‘A Butterfly on a Child’s Grave. 255 

ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 

Ancestors and Birth. 256 

A Liberal Contributor to Periodicals. 256 

Her Published Works. 256 

‘ The Step-mother '. 257 

‘ Guardian Angels ’. 257 

‘ The Brook ’. 258 

‘The April Rain’. 259 

‘ Flowers ’. 259 

‘Eros and Anteros ’. 259 

LUCY LARCOM. 

Operative in a Cotton Factory. 260 

Birth and Early Life. 260 

Her First Literary Production. 260 

Some of her Best Works. 260 

The Working Woman’s Friend. 261 

‘Hannah Binding Shoes’. 261 

ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Their Birth and Early Lot. 262 

Encouragement From Editors. 262 

Their First Volume. 262 

Some of their Prominent Works. 262 

A Comparison Between the Two Sisters.... 263 

One in Spirit through Life. 263 

United in Death. 263 

‘ Pictures of Memory ’. 264 

‘Nobility’. 264 

‘ The Gray Swan ’. 264 

‘ To the Evening Zephyr ’. 265 

‘ Death Scene ’. 265 

‘ Memories ’. 266 

Equal to Either Fortune ’. 266 

1 Light ’. 267 

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 

Birth and Education. 268 

Her First Book at Nineteen Years. 268 


PAGE 

235 

235 

235 

236 

238 

238 

238 

239 

239 

240 

240 

240 

240 

240 

241 

242 

242 

242 

242 

242 

242 

243 

244 

245 

245 

245 

245 

245 

246 

246 

246 

246 

248 

248 

248 

249 

249 

252 
















































































CONTENTS. 


Her Following Publications. 

Residence in Boston and Trips Abroad. 

A Systematic Worker. 

Personal Friendship. 

‘ If There Were Dreams to Sell ’. 

4 Wife to Husband ’. 

4 The Last Good-Bye ’ . 

1 Next Year ’. 

‘ My Mother’s Picture’. 

WASHINGTON IRVING. 

The F irst Great Pioneer in American Letters 

Birth and Ancestors. 

Named After George Washington. 

Early Success as a Journalist. 

A Two Years’ Trip in Europe. 

A Shrewd Advertisement. 

Seventeen Years Abroad. 

The Winning Character of his Genius. 

‘ The Organ of Westminster Abbey ’. 

‘Baltus Van Tassel’s Farm ’. 

4 Columbus at Barcelona ’. 

4 The Galloping Hessian ’. 

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 

The Meditative School in American Literature 

Birth, Ancestry and Education. 

Early Life. 

In “ The Brotherhood of Authors”. 

His First Literary Work. 

A Few of his Other Publications. 

‘The Moral Quality of Vegetables ’. 

DONALD G. MITCHELL. 

Characteristics of the Author. 

A Disciple of Washington Irving. 

Birth, Education, and Early Life. 

Home and Marriage. 

TJ. S. Consul to Venice. 

Semi-public Positions. 

His Most Prominent Books. 

4 Washington Irving ’. 

4 Glimpses of “Dream Life ” ’. 

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 

A Noble Part in the Battles for Freedom... 

Activity in the Anti-Slavery Agitation. 

His Contributions to Literature. 

A Popular Historian. 

4 A Puritan Sunday Morning’. 


PAGE 

268 

269 

269 

269 

269 

269 

270 
270 
270 


271 

271 

271 

272 
272 
272 


273 

274 

275 

275 

276 


281 

281 

281 

281 

281 

282 

282 


284 

284 

284 

284 

285 
285 
285 

285 

286 


297 

297 

297 

298 
298 


HAMILTON W. MABIE. 

Birth, Family, and Education. 

Familiar with the Classics. 

On the Staff of the “ Christian U nion 
Profound Stud} 7 of the Problems of Life ... 
A Declaration Typical of all his Thought... 
‘ Country Sights and Sounds ’. 

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 

Two Sensational Poems. 

Birth, Ancestry, and Early Life. 

Journalist at Twenty-one. 

On the New York “Tribune”. 

Editor of the “ World ”. 

A Remarkable War Letter. 

A List of his Prominent Woiks. 

Poet and Man of Business. 

An Ideal Home Life. 

‘ Betrothed Anew ’. 

4 The Door-Step ’. 

GEORGE H. BANCROFT. 

The First Among American Historians. 

Birth and Education. 

Extensive Studies in Europe. 

Appointed to the Chair of Greek in Harvard 

College. 

A School of High Classical Character. 

Official Service,. 

Removal to New York. 

Minister to Russia and to Germany. 

His “History of the United States” and 

other Works. 

A Long and Useful Life. 

4 Character of Roger Williams ’. 

‘Destruction of the Tea in Boston Harbor’. 

‘ Chivalry and Puritanism ’. 

4 The Position of the Puritans ’. 

JAMES PARTON. 

Ancestry, Birth, and Education. 

A Very Successful Teacher. 

His Career as a Literary Man. 

On the Staff of “ The New York Ledger ” . 

His Most Prominent Works. 

‘Old Virginia’. 

FRANCIS PARKMAN. 

Birth, Education, and Visit Abroad. 

A Summer With the Dakotah Indians. 


21 

PAGE 

299 

299 

299 

299 

299 

300 


308 

308 

308 
300 
300 
309' 

309 

309 
309' 

310 
310' 


311 

311 

311 

311 

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312 

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317 

317 

317 

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319 


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22 


CONTENTS. 


Compelled to Suspend Intellectual Work... 
An Interesting Example of his Persistency. 

His Interest in Horticulture. 

‘ The New England Colonies ’. 

4 The Heights of Abraham ’. 

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. 

A Popular Historian. 

Birth, Parentage and Early Life. 

A Thorough Preparation. 

Marriage and Happy Home. 

His Method of Composition. 

Successful as a Writer from the First. 

A List of his Works. 

Many Engaging Qualities. 

‘ The Golden Age of Tezcuco ’. 

4 The Banquet of the Dead ’. 

JOHN L. MOTLEY. 

Birth, Boyhood, and Early Associates. 

Intimate Friend of Prince Bismarck. 

Member of Massachusetts’ Legislature. 

“History of Holland”. 

Minister to Austria. 1861; to England, 1869. 

Patriot, Scholar, Historian. 

4 Bismarck ’. 

4 The Siege of Leyden ’. 

4 Assassination of William of Orange '. 


JOHN FISKE. 

Precocious Ability. 

Birth, Education and Early Life. 

His Literary Work and Most Noted Books. 

His Principal Historical Works. 

His School-books. 

4 Land Discovered ’ . 

4 The Federal Convention ’. 

JOHN B. McMASTER. 

Excelling in Different Fields. 

Parentage, Birth and Early Life. 

Professor of American History. 

His View of History. 

Instructor of the Young... 

4 The American Workman in 1784’. 

‘The Minister in New England’. 

FRANCES M. WHITCHER (THE WIDOW 
BEDOTT). 

Her nom-de-plume. 


PAGE 


Richness of Humor. 345 

Birth, Childhood and Education. 346 

Marriage and Literary Fame. 346 

Removal from Elmira, N. Y. 346 

4 Widow Bedott. to Elder Sniffles ’. 346 

4 The Widow’s Poetry and her Comments on' 

the Same About Hezekiah ’. 347 

CHARLES F. BROWN (ARTEMUS WARD). 

Birth and Education. 349 

On the 44 Commercial,” Toledo, Ohio. 349 

Local Editor of the 44 Plain Dealer ”. 349 

Successful Lecturer in England. 350 

Death at Southampton. 350 

His Works. 350 

‘Artemus Ward Visits the Shakers ’. 350 

‘At the Tomb of Shakespeare ’. 351 

HENRY W. SHAW (JOSH BILLINGS). 

Birth and Education. 352 

His Early Life of Adventure. 352 

Entered the Lecture Field. 352 

Contributor to “The New York Weekly ”.. 352 

His Published Books. 352 

4 Manifest Destiny ’. 353 

4 Letters to Farmers ’. 354 

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN). 

A World-wide Reputation. 355 

Birth, Boyhood and Education. 355 

His Pilot Life. 355 

Editor of the Virginia City 44 Enterprise” •. 355 

Journalist and Gold Digger. 355 

A Trip to Hawaii. 355 

Innocents Abroad. 355 

Some of his Other Works. 356 

A Lecturing Trip Around the World. 356 

4 Jim Smiley’s Frog’. 356 

4 Uncle DanTs Apparition and Prayer’- 357 

4 The Babies ’. 359 

MARIETTA HOLLEY (JOSIAH ALLEN’S 
WIFE). 

A Writer at an Early Age. 360 

Birth and Ancestors. 360 

Rise and Increase of Her Fame. 360 

Some of her Prominent Works. 360 

A Quarter Million Copies Sold. 360 

Characteristics of her Books. 361 

4 Josiah Allen’s Wife Calls on the President’ 361 


PAGE 

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CONTENTS. 


CHARLES F. ADAMS (YAWCOB STRAUSS). 


A Not-Soon-to-be-Forgotten Author. 363 

Birth, Education and Early Life. 363 

Service in Many Hard-fought Battles. 363 

Prominent Business Man. 363 

A Contributor to Prominent Journals. 363 

A Genial and Companionable Man. 363 

‘ Der Drummer ’. 3 Q 4 

‘ Hans and Fritz ’. 364 

‘Yawcob Strauss’. 364 

‘Mine Moder-in-Law ’. 365 

‘Yawcob’s Dribulations ’. 365 

‘The Puzzled Dutchman ’. 366 

‘ Der Oak and Der Vine ’.. 366 

EDGAR WILSON NYE (BILL NYE). 

A Man of Genuine Wit. 368 

Birth and Early Surroundings. 368 

Studied Law, Admitted to the Bar. 368 

Organized the Nye Trust. 368 

Famous Letters from Buck’s Shoals, N. C. . 368 

“ History of the United States ”. 369 

His Death.. 369 

‘The Wild Cow’ . 369 

‘ Mr. Whisk’s True Love .’. 369 

The Discovery of New York ’. 370 

JOEL C. HARRIS (UNCLE REMUS)., 

“An Accidental Author”. 372 

Birth and Humble Circumstances. 372 

In the Office of the “ Countryman ”. 372 

Beginning of his Literary Career. 372 

Studied and Practiced Law.. 373 

Co-editor of the Atlanta “ Constitution ”... 373 

His Works. 373 

‘Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Buzzard’.. 373 


ROBERT J. BURDETTE. 

A Prominent Place Among “Funny Men”. 377 

Birth and Early Education. 377 

Fought in the Civil War. 377 

Journalist, Lecturer and Baptist Minister... 377 
Contributor to “ Ladies’ Home Journal ”.. 377 

His Other Works. 377 

‘ The Movement Cure for Rheumatism’- 378 


LOUISA M. ALCOTT. 


Architect of her Own Fortune. 380 

Her Father’s Misfortunes. 380 


PAGE 

Her Early Writings. 380 

Her Letters in the Government Hospitals .. 381 

Young People’s True Friend. 381 

Her Books. 3§1 

An Admirer of Emerson. 381 

A Victim of Over-Work. 382 

‘ How Jo Made Friends ’. 382 

WILLIAM T. ADAMS (OLIVER OPTIC). 

Writer for the Young. 384 

Birth and Early Life. 384 

Teacher in Public Schools of Boston. 384 

His Editorials and Books. 384 

His Style and Influence. 384 

‘ The Sloop That Went to the Bottom ’.... 384 


SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT (GRACE 
GREENWOOD). 

Favorite Writer for Little Children. 386 

Birth and Childhood. 386 

Her Marriage. 386 

Contributions to Journals and Magazines... 386 

Her Numerous Books. 386 

Life Abroad. 386 

‘ The Baby in the Bath Tub ’. 386 

HORATIO ALGER. 

A Wholesome Author for Young People... 389 

His First Book, Great Success. 389 

A New Field. 389 

Birth, Education and Early Life. 389 

Residence in New York. 389 

Some of his Most Prominent Books. 390 

‘ How Dick Began the Day ’. 390 

EDWARD ELLIS. 

Birth and Early Life. 392 

His Historical Text-Books. 392 

His Contributions to Children’s Papers .... 392 

4 The Signal Fire ’. 392 

✓ 

MARTHA FINLEY. 

Birth, Ancestry and Early Life. 394 

Beginning of her Literary Career.. 394 

Struggle Against Adversity. 394 

Great Exertions. 394 

‘ Elsie Series,’ Great Popularity. 395 

‘Elsie’s Disappointment ’. 395 







































































24 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


MARY MAPES DODGE. 

Writer of Stories for Children. 398 

Birth and Parentage. 398 

Married William Dodge. 398 

Contributor to “ Hearth and Home ”. 398 

Success of her Works.„. 398 

Editor of ‘‘ St. Nicholas Magazine ”. 398 

Her Home in New York. 398 

‘Too Much of a Good Thing ’. 399 

HORACE GREELEY. 

Birth and Early Taste for Literature. 401 

On the “Northern Spectator”. 401 

Tries his Fortune in New York. 401 

Part Owner of the “ New Yorker ”. 401 

The “Log Cabin ’’and the N. Y. “ Tribune ” 401 

Elected to Congress. 402 

His Works. 403 

Nominated for Presidency. 403 

His Last Resting Place.. 403 

‘A Debtor’s Slavery ’. 403 

‘ The Press ’. 405 

CHARLES A. DANA. 

One of Our Foremost Men. 406 

Birth and Early Life. 406 

A Remarkable Life. 406 

His Education and College Career.. 406 

Joining the “ Brook Farm ” Men. 406 

His First Journalistic Experience.. 407 

On the New York “Tribune” . 407 

Busy Years. 407 

Difference Between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana 407 

Assistant Secretary of War. 407 

One Year in Chicago. 407 

Manager of the New York “ Sun ”. 407 

‘ Roscoe Conkling ’. 408 

* 

LYMAN ABBOTT. 

Ancestors, Birth and Education. 411 

Ordained a Minister. 411 

Secretary to the American Freedmen's Com¬ 
mission. 411 

Work as a Journalist. 411 

Successor of Henry Ward Beecher. 412 

Prolific Publisher. 412 

Successful Pulpit Speaker. 412 

‘The Jesuits’. 412 

‘The Destruction of the Cities of the Plain. 413 


PAGE 

HENRY W. WATTERSON. 

' Influential Modern Journalist. 414 

Birth and Education. 414 

Editor of the “Republican Banner ”. 414 

Service in the Confederate Army. 414 

The ” Courier-Journal,” Louisville, Ky- 414 

Prominent Part in Politics. 414 

‘ The New South ’. 414 

MURAT HALSTEAD. 

One of the Greatest Living Journalists. 416 

Nativity, Early Life and Education. 416 

Editor of “The Commercial,” Cincinnati, 

Ohio. 416 

A Continued Success. 417 

Correspondent During the Franco-Prussian 

War, 1870. 417 

In Washington and New York. 417 

Home and Family Life. 418 

‘ The Young Man at the Door ’,. 418 

WHITELAW REID. 

“ Fortune Favors the Brave ”. 420 

Birth and Early Training. 420 

War Correspondent to the “ Cincinnati Ga¬ 
zette ”. 420 

An Important Work. 420 

Editorial Writer Upon N. Y. “Tribune”.. 420 

His Most Prominent Works. 421 

His Palatial Home and Family Life. 421 

‘ Pictures of a Louisiana Plantation ’. 421 


ALBERT SHAW. 

Birth, Education and Personal Character¬ 


istics . 424 

Residence in Baltimore. 424 

On the Minneapolis Daily “Tribune”. 425 

Extensive Studies Abroad. 425 

Editor of the “Review of Reviews”. 425 

Great Success. 425 

‘Recent Development of the West ’. 425 


JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 

His Imaginative Power, Vivid Statement... 427 


Parentage, Birth and Travels Abroad. 427 

College Life and Early Training. 427 

Long Sojourn Abroad. 427 

Some of his Most Prominent Works. 427 

Expedition to India. 427 












































































CONTENTS. 


4 The Wayside and the War ’. 

1 First Months in England ’. 

The Horrors of the Plague in India’. 

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. 

Marvelous Skill in Seeing the World. 

A Clever Newspaper Reporter. 

Birth and Hereditary Bent for Letters. 

Interesting Career as a Journalist. 

The Book that Made Him Famous. 

Some of His Other Works. 

‘The Greek Defence of Velestino’. 

< 

PATRICK HENRY. 

His Talents as a Popular Orator. 

Parentage and Education. 

Marriage and Early Life. 

A Prominent Lawyer. 

Bold Principles. 

The Leader of his Colony. 

The First Governor of Virginia. 

His Death. 

‘ Resistance to British Aggression. 

4 The War Inevitable ’. 

HENRY CLAY. 

The “Great Pacificator’’. 

Birth, Early Hardships, Toil and Poverty .. 

Removal to Kentucky and Success. 

Marriage and Home. 

In the Senate of the United States. 

Member of the House of Representatives.. 

Elected Speaker. 

Secretary of State. 

The Conflict of 1818. 

The Disappointment of His Life. 

The “Compromise” of 1850 . 

The Leading Object of His Life. 

‘Defence of Jefferson,’ 1813. 

4 Reply to John Randolph ’. 

On Recognizing the Independence of 
Greece’ . 

DANIEL WEBSTER, 

First among the “ Makers of the Nation’’.. 

Birth, Ancestors and Early Life. 

The “Webster’s Boy”. 

Extraordinary Memory. 

Majestic Appearance. 

Lawyer, Orator and Statesman. 

A Famous Case. 

H is Most Famous Speeches. 


25 

PAGB 


Secretary of State. 442 

Home and Home Life. 442 

Death and Funeral. 442 

‘ South Carolina and Massachusetts,’. 442 

4 Liberty and Union ’. 443 

‘ The Eloquence of Action ’. 444 

‘ The Twenty-second of February’. 444 

‘ America’s Gift to Europe ’. 445 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

The Great Charm of His Orations. 446 

Birth, Education and Early Life. 446 

Professor of Greek at Harvard College. 446 

Editor of the “North American Review.” 446 

Member of Congress. 446 

Minister to England. 446 

President of Harvard College. 447 

Secretary of State. 447 

His Lectures and Orations. . 447 

Death. 447 

‘ Twenty-five Years of Peace ’. 447 

4 The Father of the Republic ’. 448 

4 The Land of Our Forefathers ’. 448 

WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

“The Silvery-tongued Orator” .. 449 

How He came into Prominence. 449 

A Memorable Speech. 449 

Birth, Parents and Education. 450 

A Popular Lecturer. 450 

H is Most Celebrated Addresses. 450 

4 Political Agitation ’. 450 

4 Toussaint L’Ouverture ’. 451 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

No Superior as Pulpit Orator. 452 

Parentage, Birth and Childhood. 452 

Education and Conversion. 452 

His Marriage and First Pastorate. 453 

Pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn,N. Y. 453 

A Bold Abolitionist. 453 

Ever the Champion of the Right. 454 

His Death and Funeral. 454 

4 Public Dishonesty ’. 455 

Eulogy on General Grant ’. 456 

From “The Sparks of Nature” ’. 457 

JOHN B. GOUGH. 

A Great National Orator. 458 

Birth and Early Life. 458 

A Life of Hopeless Dissipation. 458 


page 

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430 

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431 

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26 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


Public Confession and Reformation. 458 

A Popular Lecturer. 458 

Called to England. 458 

A Happy Life. 459 

His Published Works. 459 

‘ Water and Rum ’. 459 

‘ The Power of Habit ’... 460 

‘ What is a Minority ? ’. 461 

* CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. 

Great Versatility. 462 

Birth, Ancestors and Boyhood. 462 

A Close Student of Politics. 462 

A Highly Successful Lawyer. 462 

A Giant in Politics. 462 

Member of Congress. 463 

Secretary of State. 463 

Minister to Japan. 463 

His Career as a Railway Man. 463 

‘ The Pilgrims ’. 464 

HENRY W. GRADY. 

Devoid of Sectional Animosities. 465 

The Union His Pride. 465 

Eloquent, Logical and Aggressive. 465 

Id is Principal Speeches. 465 

Birth, Parentage and Education. 466 

Marriage and Struggle for Existence. 466 

“A Friend in Need ”. 466 

Success at Last. 466 

Premature Death. 466 

4 The New South ’. 467 

‘ Regard for the Negro Race ’. 467 

4 Appeal for Temperance ’. 468 

JULIA WARD HOWE. 

Her Home a Meeting Place for Great Men. 469 

Birth, Parentage and Education. 469 

Marriage and Tour Abroad. 469 

Her First Book. 469 

Interest in the Anti-Slavery Question. 469 

Her Famous “ Battle Hymn ”. 469 

Visit to England. 470 

A New Journey Abroad. 470 

‘The Battle Hymn of the Rebublic’. 470 

‘Our Country’. 471 

‘ The Unspeakable Pang ’. 471 

MARY A. LIVERMORE. 

Her Early Experience. 473 

Birth, Parentage and Education. 473 

Teacher of Latin and French. 473 

In the South. 473 


PAGE 

Marriage. 473 

An Active Temperance Worker. 473 

Her Literary Work. 474 

War Service. 474 

An Ardent Woman-Suffragist. 474 

Her Pen Never Idle. 475 

‘ Useful Women ’. 475 

BELVA ANN LOCKWOOD. 

One of the Greatest Benefactors of Her Sex 477 

Birth, Education and Early Life. 477 

Professor at Lockport Academy. 477 

Admission to the Supreme Court of the U. S. 477 

A Remarkable Nomination. 478 

Great Popularity. 478 

Several Times Delegate to International Con¬ 
gresses of Peace. 478 

Assistant Editor to the “ Peacemaker” .... 478 

4 Address before the Committee of the House 
of Delegates, Washington, in Support 


of Woman Suffrage ’. 479 

SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 

Early Life and Education. 481 

How She Became an Abolitionist, Woman- 

Suffragist and Temperance Worker.. 481 

Arrested, Tried and Fined for Voting. 482 

Speeches and Lectures. 482 

Celebration of Her Seventieth Birthday.... 482 

‘Woman’s Right to Suffrage. 483 

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 

Forceful, Logical and Eloquent Orator. 485 

Primarily a Woman-Suffragist. 485 

Birth, Childhood and Education. 485 

How She Became a Woman’s Rights Believer 485 

How She Became an Abolitionist. 485 

The First Woman’s Rights Convention .... 485 

Her Addresses and Speeches. 486 

Her Literary Works. 486 

A Thoroughly Domestic Woman. 486 

‘ A Plea for Equal Rights ’. 486 

‘ Address to the Legislature of New York ’. 487 

FRANCES E. WILLARD. 

Birth, Childhood and Early Life. 489 

Teacher and President of Evanston College. 489 
TheWomen’s “Crusade against Rum Shops” 489 

Joining in the Crusade. 489 

The Result of Her Work. 490 

‘ Home Protection ’. 490 













































































CONTENTS. 


27 


PAGE 


LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 

Activity against the “Fugitive Slave Law”. 492 

Birth, Education and Early Life. 492 

Her First Book a Success. 492 

Marriage and Anti-Slavery Work. 493 

The First Anti-Slavery Book in America... 493 

1 A Little Waif'. 494 

‘To Whittier on His Seventieth Birthday.. 494 

‘ Politeness ’. 494 

‘ Flowers ’. 495 

4 Unselfishness'. 495 


PAGE 


ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON. 

A Fearless Girl. 496 

Birth, Childhood and Education. 496 

Her Debut Before the Public. 496 

Cast Upon the World. 496 

How She was Named “ The Girl Orator ”.. 496 

The Mistake of Her Life. 497 

Misfortunes and Difficulties. 497 

Rare Eloquence and Dramatic Fervor. 497 

‘ Why Colored Men Should Enlist in the 

Army ’. 497 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


4 Home, Sweet Home ’. 499 

‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. 499 

4 The American Flag ’. 500 

4 Blind Man and the Elephant’. 501 

4 Hail, Columbia ! ’. 501 

4 Betty and the Bear '. 502 

4 Visit of St. Nicholas’. 503 

4 Woodman, Spare that Tree ’. 505 

4 Sanctity of Treaties, 1796 . 505 

4 The Bloom was on the Alder and the Tassel on 

the Corn ’. 505 

4 The Declaration of Independence ’. 506 

‘Washington’s Address to His Soldiers, 1776’.. 507 

‘The General Government and the States’. 507 

‘ What Saved the Union ’. 508 

4 The Birthday of Washington ’. 508 

4 Oh ! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be 

Proud?’. 509 

4 Columbus in Chains ’. 510 

4 The Bivouac of the Dead ’. 510 


4 Address at the Dedication of Gettysburg Ceme- 


tery ’. 611 

4 Memorj r ’. 511 

4 All Quiet Along the Potomac ’. 512 

4 A Life on the Ocean Wave ’. 512 

4 The Blue and the Gray’. 513 

‘Roll-call’. 513 

4 Theology in the Quarters ’. 514 

4 Ruin Wrought by Rum ’. 514 

4 To a Skeleton ’. 515 

4 Pledge with Wine ’. 515 

4 Spartacus to the Gladiators at Capua ’. 517 

4 The Crabbed Man ’. 518 

4 Putting up O’ the Stove ’. 519 

4 The Poor Indian ! ’.521 

4 Jenkins Goes to a Picnic ’. 521 

4 Sewing on a Button ’. 522 

4 Casey at the Bat ’. 522 

4 The Magical Isle ’. 523 

4 Stray Bits of Character ’. 524 


























































OUR FAVORITE ENGLISH AUTHORS. 


\ 


PAGE 


WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 

Little Known of His Life. 549 

Marries Anne Hat lie way. 549 

Conducts Theatres and Writes Plays. 550 

History and Character of His Dramas. 552 

‘Mercy’. 553 

‘Sonnet’. 553 

‘ The Abuse of Authority ’. 554 

‘ The Witches ’. 554 

‘ Death of Queen Katherine '. 555 

‘The Power of Imagination’. 555 

‘ The Fairy to Puck ’. 555 

‘Ariel’s Song’. 556 

‘ Oberon’s Vision ’. 556 

‘ Fall of Cardinal Wolsey ’. 557 

‘ Touchstone and Audrey ’. 558 

‘ The Seven Ages ’. 559 

‘Ophelia’.*.. 560 

‘ Macbeth’s Irresolution ’. 560 

‘ Antony’s Oration at Caesar’s Funeral ’.... 561 

‘ Shylock and Antonio ’. 562 

‘ Hamlet’s Soliloquy ’. 563 

‘ Hamlet and the Ghost ’. 563 

‘ Othello’s Wooing ’. 564 

JOHN MILTON. 

Early Life and Education. 566 

Travels Abroad. 566 

Blindness and Personal Description. 567 

Public Services. 567 

‘ Eve’s Account of Her Creation ’. 568 

‘ Invocation to Light ’. 568 

From ‘ L’Allegro ’. 569 

‘ A Book Not a Dead Thing '. 570 

‘The Hymn to the Nativity ’. 570 

‘ Departure from Eden ’. 571 

THOMAS GRAY. 

Fame Rests on the ‘ Elegy ’.. 572 

Story of Walpole. 572 

Declines the Laureateship. 572 

Personal Traits. 572 

Character of His Great Poem. 572 

‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard’. 572 


PAGE 

ROBERT BURNS. 

His Life Not a Model. 575 

His Peasant Father. 575 

Rhyming and Making Love. 575 

Visit to Edinburgh. 575 

Farmer, Exciseman and Poet. 576 

‘ The Deil Cam’ Fiddlin’ Through the Town ’ 576 

‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’. 577 

‘The Banks O’ Doon ’. 577 

‘ Man was Made to Mourn ’. 578 

‘ Tam O’Shanter. 579 

‘ Bruce to His Men ’. 580 

‘ The Cotter’s Saturday Night’.. 580 

GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 

Controversy Over His Writings. 582 

The Sensitive Boy. 582 

The Worthless Father and Indulgent Mother 582 

Early Life and Education. 582 

“ English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ... 582 

Marriage and After-life. 582 

Takes Part in the Greek Rebellion and Dies 583 

His Poems. 583 

‘ The Eve of Battle ’. 583 

‘The Land of the East’. 583 

‘ The Isles of Greece ’. 584 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

His Strange Character and Appearance. 585 

Reads the Bible when Three Years Old_ 585 

Leaves Cambridge and Enlists in the Dragoons 585 

Plans the Pantisocracy. 585 

Writes the “Ancient Mariner”. 585 

Succumbs to the Use of Opium. 585 

A Delightful Talker. 587 

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. 587 

‘ The Phantom Ship ’. 587 

‘ Adieu of the Ancient Mariner ’. 589 

‘A Calm on the Equator ’. 591 

THOMAS HOOD. 

Apprenticed to an Engraver. 592 

Assistant Editor ot the London Magazine. . 592 








































































OUR FAVORITE ENGLISH AUTHORS. 


29 


“Odes and Addresses ’’. 

The ‘ ‘ Comic Annual ”. 

Financial Embarrassment. 

Life in Germany. 

Returns to London. 

k The Song of the Shirt ’. 

1 The Bridge of Sighs ’. 

W11; LI AM WORDSWORTH. 

His Mission as a Poet. 

Ilis Hostile Reception. 

Parentage and Means of Livelihood. 

The Lake Poets. 

Becomes the Laureate. 

Principal Works. 

‘ Our Immortality ’. 

k To a Skylark ’. 

1 Ode to Duty 1 . 

k To His Wife ’. 

ALFRED TENNYSON. 

The First of Modern Poets. 

Education. 

Dislike of Publicity. 

The Pension. 

His Great Poems. 

‘ The Song of the Brook ’. 

k Prelude to In Memoriam’. 

k Ring Out, Wild Bells ’. 

k The Lady of Shallott'. 

‘ Sweet and Low ’. 

4 The Here and the Hereafter '. 

k The Passing of Arthur ’. 

DR. JOHN WATSON (IAN MACLAREN). 

He Enters Literature in Middle Life. 

Vacations in Scotch Farm-houses. 

Studies in Edinburgh and Wiirtemberg. 

Accepts a Call to a Secluded Parish. 

A Born Story-teller. 

Removes to Glasgow and to Liverpool. 

Writes “ Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush 

His Visit to America. 

k In Marget’s Garden ’. 

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

A Born Story-teller. 

Lameness. 

Becomes Sheriff of Selkirkshire. 

Married Life. 

Abandons His Profession of Law. 


PAGE 


His Poems. 614 

His Novels. 615 

Later Life and Death. 616 

k Parting of Marmion and Douglas ’. 616 

4 Melrose Abbey ’. 617 

k The Fisherman’s Funeral ’. 618 

1 The Necessity and Dignity of Labor ’. 620 

k Sir Walter Raleigh Spreads His Cloak for 

Queen Elizabeth ’. 621 

4 The Storming of Front-de-Boeuf ’s Castle ’. 623 


CHARLES DICKENS. 

He Has Awakened Pity in Sixty Million 


Hearts. 625 

His Shiftless Father. 625 

Work in a Blacking Factory. 625 

Goes to School and Studies Shorthand. 625 

44 Sketches by Boz ’’. 626 

The Story of His Novels. 626 

His Readings and American Journeys. 627 

The Children of His Genius. 628 

k Bard ell versus Pickwick ’. 628 

1 Through the Storm ’. 630 

‘ The Death of Little Nell’. 633 

‘ Sam Weller’s Valentine ’. 635 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 

His Standing as a Writer. 638 

Personal History. 638 

His Books and Lectures. 639 

Contributions to Punch . 640 

A Social Critic. 640 

‘The Fotheringay Off the Stage ’. 641 

4 Miss Rebecca Sharp ’. 643 

k Thomas Newcome Answers ’. 645 

k Old Fables with a New Purpose ’. 646 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 

Birth and Early Life. 647 

Education of a Boy. 647 

Description by Miss Mitford. 647 

Ill Health. 647 

Marriage. 648 

Her Principal Works. 648 

Tribute to Her Genius by Her Husband- 648 

4 The Cry of the Human ’. 648 

‘The Sleep’. 649 

GEORGE ELIOT. 

Her Position as a Novelist. 650 

Birth and Early Life. 650 


PAGE 

592 

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596 

596 

596 

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600 

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609 

609 

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610 

610 

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614 

614 

614 

614 

614 





















































































30 


OUR FAVORITE ENGLISH AUTHORS. 


PAGE 


Her Great Novels. 650 

Marriage and Closing Years. 651 

‘Florence in 1794’. 651 

‘A Passage at Arms’. 652 

‘ The Poyser Family Go to Church. 653 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

Biography by Trevelyan. 656 

Early Precocity. 656 

Contributions to Edinburgh Review . 656 

Public Services. 656 

History of England. 657 

‘ Fallacious Distrust of Liberty ’. 658 


PAGE 

‘ John Hampden ’. 659 

‘ The Puritans ’. 659 

‘ Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress ’.. 660 

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

His Place as Statesman and Scholar. 661 

Distinction at Oxford. 661 

His Share in the Government. 661 

His Principal Books. 662 

Oratory and Skill as a Financier. 662 

Retirement. 662 

‘Anticipations for the Church of England ’. 662 

‘ Some After-thoughts ’. 663 

‘An Estimate of Macaulay ’. 664 












































SELECTIONS SUITABLE FOR RECITATION. 


ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY. 


PAGE 

Act for Truth. 108 

Address at the Dedication of Gettysburg Ceme¬ 
tery. 511 

All Quiet Along the Potomac. 512 

Alpine Flowers, The. 254 

Alpine Sheep, The. 110 

American Workman in 1784, The. 343 

American Flag, The. 500 

Annabel Lee. 50 

Appeal for Temperance. 468 

April Rain, The. 259 

Arab to the Palm, The. Ill 

Artemus Ward at the Tomb of Shakespeare -. - 350 

Artemus Ward Visits the Shakers. 351 

Babies, The. 359 

Banquet of the Dead, The. 330 

BaVdell versus Pickwick. 628 

Barefoot Boy, The. 85 

Battlefield, The. 41 

Bells, The. 53 

Betsy and I are Out. 156 

Betty and the Bear. 502 

Bill and Joe. 93 

Birthday of Washington, The. 508 

Bison Track, The. 110 

Bivouac of the Dead, The. 510 

Blue and the Gray, The. 513 

Bridge of Sighs, The. 594 

Bruce to His Men. 580 

Butterfly on a Child’s Grave, A. 255 

Chambered Nautilus, The. 95 

Character of Roger Williams. 314 

Chivalry and Puritanism. .315 

Christine, Awake for Your Life. 202 

Christmas Night at St. Peter .. 232 

Columbus. 254 

Columbus at Barcelona. 216 

Cotter’s Saturday Night, The. 580 

Crabbed Man, The. 518 

Cry of the Human, The. 548 


David’s Lament for Absalom 


PAGE 


Death of Little Nell, The. 633 

Death of an Infant. 255 

Debtor’s Slavery, A. 403 

Declaration of Independence, The. 506 

Defence of Jefferson, 1813. 438 

Der Drummer. 364 

Description of Virgin Mary. 192 

Dickens in Camp. 150 

Discovery of New York, The. 370 

Dutch Lullaby, A. 153 

Dying Alchemist, The. 117 

Eloquence of Action, The. 444 

Emerson and the Emersonites. 177 

Encounter with a Panther. 169 

Eulogy on General Grant. 456 

Eve of Battle, The. 583 

Excelsior. 64 

Father of the Republic, The. 448 

Fourth of July Ode. 109 

General Government and the States, The. 507 

Gone With a Handsomer Man. 147 

Hannah Binding Shoes. 261 

Hans and Fritz. 364 

Here and the Hereafter, The.. 605 

How Jo Made Friends. 382 

Hymn Sung at the Completion ot the Concord 

Monument (1836). 15 

Hymn to the Beautiful. 121 

If There were Dreams to Sell. 269 

In Prison for Debt. 38 

Isles of Greece, The. 584 

Israfel. 52 

Jim Bludso. 141 

Jim Smiley’s Frog. 356 

Josiah Allen’s Wife Calls on the President. 361 

Kit Carson’s Ride. 163 

Land of Our Forefathers, The. 448 
















































































32 


SELECTIONS SUITABLE FOE RECITATION OR READING. 


Land of the East. 

Lenore. 

Letters to Farmers. 

Liberty and Union. 

Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln, The. 

Little Breeches. 

Manifest Destiny. 

Maud Miiller. 

Mine Moder-in-Law. 

INI oral Qualities of Vegetables, The. 

Movement Cure for Rheumatism, The. 

Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Buzzard. 

Music in the Year 2000... 

My Mother’s Picture. 

Necessity and Dignity of Labor. 

New South, The. 

New South, The. 

Niagara. 

Norse Lullaby, A. 

O Captain ! My Captain !. 

Ode to Duty. 

Oh ! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud ? 

Old Ireland. 

Old Ironsides. 

Old Virginia. 

Ole Sue. 

On Recognizing the Independence of Greece.... 

Organ of Westminster Abbey, The. 

Other World, The. 

Our Hired Girl. 

Our Immortality. 

Our Two Opinions. 

Parting of Marmion and Douglas. 

Pearl. 

Phantom Ship, The. 

Pictures of Memory... 

Pilgrims, The. 

Political Agitation. 

Power of Habit, The. 

Prayer of the Wandering Jew. 

Prelude to In Memoriam. 

Public Dishonesty. 

Puritan Sunday Morning, A. 

Puzzled Dutchman, The. 


PAGE 

Raggedy Man, The. 146 

Raven, The. 55 

Regard for the Negro Race. 467 

Resistance to British Aggression. 434 

Ring Out, Wild Bells.:. 603 

Roll-call. 513 

Ruin Wrought by Rum.-. 514 

Sam Weller’s Valentine. 635 

Sanctity of Treaties. 505 

Sargent’s Portrait of Edwin Booth at “The 

Players ”. 133 

Sheridan. 136 

Siege of Leyden, The. 336 

Sleep, The. 649 

Societ \ 7 upon the Stanislaus, The. 149 

Song of the Brook, The. 602 

Song of the Shirt, The. 592 

Song of the Camp, The.... . Ill 

South Carolina and Massachusetts. 442 

Spartacus to the Gladiators at Capua. 517 

Spelling Down the Master. 195 

Star-Spangled Banner, The. 579 

Tam O' Shan ter. 579 

Theology in the Quarters. 514 

To a Skylark. 98 

To a Water-fowl. 38 

Toussaint l'Ouverture. 451 

Twenty-five Years of Peace. 447 

Twenty-second of February, The. 445 

Uncle Dan’l’s Apparition and Prayer. 357 

Venetian Vagabonds. 188 

Visit from St. Nicholas. 503 

War Inevitable, The. 435 

Washington’s Address to His Soldiers. 507 

Water and Rum. 459 

What is a Minority?. 461 

What Saved the Union. 508 

Widow Bedott to Elder Sniffles. 346 

Woodman, Spare that Tree. 505 

Wreck of the Hesperus, The. 65 

Yawcob Strauss. 354 


PAGE 

583 

53 

354 

443 

136 

140 

353 

86 

365 

282 

378 

373 

212 

270 

620 

414 

467 

254 

154 

126 

599 

509 

127 

94 

319 

199 

439 

275 

225 

146 

597 

153 

616 

177 

587 

264 

464 

450 

460 

191 

603 

455 

298 

366 





















































































































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WILLIAM CULLEN BEY ANT. 

THE POET OF NATURE. 


T is said that “genius always manifests itself before its possessor 
reaches manhood.” Perhaps in no case is this more true than in 
that of the poet, and William Cullen Bryant was no exception to 
the general rule. The poetical fancy was early displayed in him. 
He began to write verses at nine, and at ten composed a little 
poem to be spoken at a public school, which was published in a 
newspaper. At fourteen a collection of his poems was published in 12 mo. form 
by E. G. House of Boston. Strange to say the longest one of these, entitled 
“The Embargo” was political in its character setting forth his reflections on the 
Anti-Jeffersonian Federalism prevalent in New England at that time. But it 
is said that never after that effort did the poet employ his muse upon the politics 
of the day, though the general topics of liberty and independence have given occa¬ 
sion to some of his finest efforts. Bryant was a great lover of nature. In the 
Juvenile Collection above referred to were published an “Ode to Connecticut 
Biver” and also the lines entitled “ Drought” which show the characteristic ob¬ 
servation as well as the style in which his youthful muse found expression. It 
was written July, 1807, when the author was thirteen years of age, and will be found 
among the succeeding selections. 

“ Thanatopsis,” one of his most popular poems, (though he himself marked it 
low) was written when the poet was but little more than eighteen years of age. This 
production is called the beginning of American poetry. 

William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummington, Hampshire Co., Mass., 
November 3rd, 1784. His father was a physician, and a man of literary culture 
who encouraged his son’s early ability, and taught him the value of correctness and 
compression, and enabled him to distinguish between true poetic enthusiasm and the 
bombast into which young poets are apt to fall. The feeling and reverence with 
which Bryant cherished the memory of his father whose life was 

“ Marked with some act of goodness every day,” 

is touchingly alluded to in several of his poems and directly spoken of with pathetic 
eloquence in the “Hymn to Death” written in 1825: 

Alas ! I little thought that the stern power 
Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus 



3 


( 33 ) 
























34 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


Before the strain was ended. It must cease— 

For he is in his grave who taught my youth 
The art of verse, and in the bud of life 
Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off 
Untimely ! when thy reason in its strength, 

Ripened by years of toil and studious search 
And watch of Nature’s silent lessons, taught 
Thy hand to practise best the lenient art 
To which thou gavest thy laborious days, 

And, last, thy life. And. therefore, when the earth 
Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes, 

And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill 
Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned pale 
When thou wert gone. This faltering verse, which thou 
Shalt not, as wont, o’erlook, is all I have 
To offer at thy grave—this—and the hope 
To copy thy example. 

Bryant was educated at Williams College, but left with an honorable discharge 
before graduation to take up the study of law, which he practiced one year at Plain- 
field and nine years at Great Barrington, but in 1825 he abandoned law for litera¬ 
ture, and removed to New York wherein 1826 he began to edit the “Evening 
Post,” which position he continued to occupy from that time until the day of his 
death. William Cullen Bryant and the “ Evening Post” were almost as conspicuous 
and permanent features of the city as the Battery and Trinity Church. 

In 1821 Mr. Bryant married Frances Fairchild, the loveliness of w T hose charac¬ 
ter is hinted in some of his sweetest productions. The one beginning 

“ 0 fairest of the rural maids,” 

was written some years before their marriage; and “The Future Life,” one of the 
noblest and most pathetic of his poems, is addressed to her :— 

“ In meadows fanned by Heaven’s life-breathing wind, 

In the resplendence of that glorious sphere 
And larger movements of the unfettered mind, 

Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here? 

“ Will not thy own meek heart demand me there,— 

That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given ? 

My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, 

And wilt thou never utter it in heaven ? 

Among his best-known poems are “A Forest Hymn,” “The Death of the 
Flowers,” “ Lines to a Waterfowl,” and “ The Planting of the Apple-Tree.” One 
of the greatest of his works, though not among the most popular, is his translation 
of Homer, which he completed when seventy-seven years of age. 

Bryant had a marvellous memory. His familiarity with the English poets w^as 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


35 


such that when at sea, where he was always too ill to read much, he would beguile 
the time by reciting page after page from favorite authors. However long the 
voyage, he never exhausted his resources. “ I once proposed,” says a friend, “ to 
send for a copy of a magazine in which a new poem of his was announced to appear. 
‘You need not send for it,’ said he, ‘I can give it to you.’ ‘Then you have a copy 
with you?’ said I. ‘ No,’ he replied, ‘ but I can recall it,’ and thereupon proceeded 
immediately to write it out, I congratulated him upon having such a faithful 
memory. ‘ If allowed a little time,’ he replied, ‘ I could recall every line of poetry 
I have ever written.’ ” 

His tenderness of the feelings of others, and his earnest desire always to avoid the 
giving of unnecessary pain, were very marked. “ Soon after I began to do the 
duties of literary editor,” writes an associate, “Mr. Bryant, who was reading a 
review of a little book of wretchedly halting verse, said to me : ‘ I wish you would 
deal very gently with poets, especially the weaker ones.’ ” 

Bryant was a man of very striking appearance, especially in age. “ It is a fine 
sight,” says one writer, “ to see a man full of years, clear in mind, sober in judg¬ 
ment, refined in taste, and handsome in person.I remember once to have 

been at a lecture where Mr. Bryant sat several seats in front of me, and his finely- 
sized head was especially noticeable .... The observer of Bryant’s capacious 
skull and most refined expression of face cannot fail to read therein the history of 
a noble manhood.” 

The grand old veteran of verse died in New York in 1878 at the age of eighty- 
four, universally known and honored. He was in his sixth year when George 
Washington died, and lived under the administration of twenty presidents and had 
seen his own writings in print for seventy years. During this long life—though editor 
for fifty years of a political daily paper, and continually before the public—he had 
kept his reputation unspotted from the world, as if he had, throughout the decades, 
continually before his mind the admonition of the closing lines of “ Thanatopsis” 
written by himself seventy years before. 







36 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


THANATOPSIS* 

The following production is called the beginning of American poetry. 

That a young man not yet 19 should have produced a poem so lofty in conception, so full ot chaste lan¬ 
guage and delicate and striking imagery, and, above all, so pervaded by a noble and cheerful religious 
philosophy, may well be regarded as one of the most remarkable examples of early maturity in literary 
history. 


0 him who, in the love of Nature, holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she 
speaks 

A various language ; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
Over thy spirit, and sad images 
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, 
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;— 

Go forth, under the open sky, and list 
To Nature’s teachings, w T hile from all around— 
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air— 
Comes a still voice.—Yet a few days, and thee 
The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, 

Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 

Thy image. Earth, that nourish’d thee, shall claim 

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again; 

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 
Thine individual being, shalt thou go 
To mix forever with the elements, 

To be a brother to the insensible rock 
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone,—nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world,—with kings, 
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good, 

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 

All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills 
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,—the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 

The venerable woods,—rivers that move 



In majesty, and the complaining brooks 

That make the meadows green ; and, pour’d round all, 

Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,— 

Are but the solemn decorations all 

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, 

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, 

Are shining on the sad abodes of death, 

Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 
Of morning, traverse Barca’s desert sands, 

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
Save its own dashings,—yet—the dead are there, 
And millions in those solitudes, since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep,—the dead reign there alone. 

So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw 
In silence from the living, and no friend 
Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase 
His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
Of ages glides away, the sons of men— 

The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes 
In the full strength of years, matron and maid, 

And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man— 
Shall, one by one, be gather’d to thy side, 

By those who in their turn shall follow them. 

So live that, when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 

Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustain’d and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of liis couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 


WAITING BY THE GATE. 



ESIDES the massive gateway built up in 
years gone by, 

Upon whose top the clouds in eternal 
shadow lie, 


While streams the evening sunshine on the quiet 
wood and lea, 

I stand and calmly wait until the hinges turn for 
me. 


*The following copyrighted selections from Wm. Cullen Bryant are inserted by permission of D. Appleton & Co. the nub 
lishers of his works. ‘ ’’ * 
















WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 37 


The tree tops faintly rustle beneath the breeze s flight, 

A soft soothing sound, yet it whispers of the night; 

I hear the woodthrush piping one mellow descant 
more, 

And scent the flowers that blow when the heat of 
day is o’er. 

Behold the portals open and o’er the threshold, now, 

There steps a wearied one with pale and furrowed 
brow; 

His count of years is full, his alloted task is wrought; 

He passes to his rest from a place that needs him not. 

In sadness, then, I ponder how quickly fleets the 
hour 

Of human strength and action, man’s courage and 
his power. 

I muse while still the woodthrush sings down the 
golden day, 

And as I look and listen the sadness wears away. 

Again the hinges turn, and a youth, departing throws 

A look of longing backward, and sorrowfully goes; 

A blooming maid, unbinding the roses from her hair, 

Moves wonderfully away from amid the young and 
fair. 

Oh, glory of our race that so suddenly decays! 

Oh, crimson flush of morning, that darkens as we 
gaze! 

Oh, breath of summer blossoms that on the restless air 

Scatters a moment’s sweetness and flies we know not 
where. 

I grieve for life’s bright promise, just shown and 
then withdrawn ; 


But still the sun shines round me; the evening birds 
sing on; 

And I again am soothed, and beside the ancient gate, 

In this soft evening sunlight, I calmly stand and 
wait. 

Once more the gates are opened, an infant group go 
out, 

The sweet smile quenched forever, and stilled the 
sprightly shout. 

Oh, frail, frail tree of life, that upon the greensward 
strews 

Its fair young buds unopened, with every wind that 
blows ! 

So from every region, so enter side by side, 

The strong and faint of spirit, the meek and men of 
pride, 

Steps of earth’s greatest, mightiest, between those 
pillars gray, 

And prints of little feet, that mark the dust away. 

And some approach the threshold whose looks are 
blank with fear, 

And some whose temples brighten with joy are draw¬ 
ing near, 

As if they saw dear faces, and caught the gracious 

e y e 

Of Him, the Sinless Teacher, who came for us to die. 

I mark the joy, the terrors; yet these, within my 
heart, 

Can neither wake the dread nor the longing to 
depart; 

And, in the sunshine streaming of quiet wood and lea, 

I stand and calrnlv wait until the hinges turn for me. 


O 


“ BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN.” 


DEEM not they are blest alone 

Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep; 
The Power who pities man has shown 
A blessing for the eyes that weep. 

The light of smiles shall fill again 
The lids that overflow with tears; 

And weary hours of woe and pain 
Are promises of happier years. 

There is a day of sunny rest 

For every dark and troubled night; 

And grief may bide an evening guest, 

But joy shall come with early light. 


And thou, who, o’er thy friend’s low bier, 
Sheddest the bitter drops like rain, 

Hope that a brighter, happier sphere 
Will give him to thy arms again. 

Nor let the good man’s trust depart, 
Though life its common gifts deny,— 
Though with a pierced and bleeding heart, 
And spurned of men, he goes to die. 

For Gi-od hath marked each sorrowing day, 
And numbered every secret tear, 

And heaven’s long age of bliss shall pay 
For all his children suffer here. 










38 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM. 


ERE are old trees, tall oaks, and gnarled 
pines, 

That stream with gray-green mosses; here 
the ground 

Was never touch’d by spade, and flowers 
spring up 

Unsown, and die ungather’d. It is sweet 

To linger here, among the flitting birds 

And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks and winds 

That shake the leaves, and scatter as they pass 

A fragrance from the cedars thickly set 

With pale blue berries. In these peaceful shades— 

Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old— 

My thoughts go up the long dim path of years, 

Back to the earliest days of Liberty. 

0 Freedom ! thou art not, as poets dream, 

A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, 

And wavy tresses gushing from the cap 
With which the Roman master crown’d his slave, 
When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, 
Arm’d to the teeth, art thou: one mailed hand 
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword ; thy brow, 
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarr’d 
With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs 
Are strong and struggling. Power at thee has 
launch’d 

His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee; 

They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven. 
Merciless Power has dug thy dungeon deep, 

And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires, 

Have forged thy chain; yet while he deems thee 
bound, 

The links are shiver’d, and the prison walls 
Fall outward ; terribly thou springest forth, 

As springs the flame above a burning pile. 

And shoutest to the nations, who return 
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. 

Thy birth-right was not given by human hands: 



Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields, 
While yet our race was few, thou sat’st with him, 

To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars, 

And teach the reed to utter simple airs. 

Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood, 

Didst war upon the panther and the wolf, 

His only foes: and thou with him didst draw 
The earliest furrows on the mountain side, 

Soft with the Deluge. Tyranny himself, 

The enemy, although of reverend look, 

Hoary with many years, and far obey’d, 

Is later born than thou ; and as he meets 
The grave defiance of thine elder eye, 

The usurper trembles in his fastnesses. 

Thou shalt w r ax stronger with the lapse of years, 
But he shall fade into a feebler age; 

Feebler, yet subtler; he shall weave his snares, 
And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap 
His wither’d hands, and from their ambush call 
His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send 
Quaint maskers, forms of fair and gallant mien, 

To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words 
To charm thy ear; while his sly imps, by stealth, 
Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread on 
thread, 

That grow to fetters; or bind down thy arms 
With chains conceal’d in chaplets. Oh ! not yet 
Mayst thou unbrace thy corslet, nor lay by 
Thy sword, nor yet, 0 Freedom ! close thy lids 
In slumber ; for thine enemy never sleeps. 

And thou must watch and combat, till the day 
Of the new Earth and Heaven. But wouldst thou rest 
Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men, 

These old and friendly solitudes invite 
Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees 
Were young upon the unviolated earth, 

And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new, 
Beheld thy glorious childhood, and rejoiced. 




TO A WATERFOWL. 


HER, ’midst falling dew, 
lie glow the heavens with the last steps 
of day, 

, through their rosy depths, dost thou 
pursue 

Thy solitary way ? 

Vainly the fowler’s eye 

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 

As, darkly limn’d upon the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek’st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 


Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
On the chafed ocean side ? 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,— 

The d esert and illimitable air,— 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fann’d, 

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 

Yht.stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 
Though the dark night is near. 

And soon that toil shall end; 

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, 
Soon, o’er thy shelter’d nest. 


















WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


39 


Thou’rt gone ; the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallow’d up thy form; yet on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 


He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright. 




ROBERT 

ERRILY swinging on brier and weed, 

Near to the nest of his little dame, 
Over the mountain-side or mead, 

Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: 
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link, 

Spink, spank, spink; 

Snug and safe is that nest of ours, 

Hidden among the summer flowers. 

Chee, cliee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed, 

Wearing a bright black wedding coat; 
White are his shoulders and white his crest, 
Hear him call in his merry note: 

Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link, 

Spink, spank, spink ; 

Look what a nice new coat is mine, 

Sure there was never a bird so fine. 

Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife, 

Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, 
Passing at home a patient life, 

Broods in the grass while her husband sings, 
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link, 

Spink, spank, spink ; 

Brood, kind creature; you need not fear 
Thieves and robbers, while I am here. 

Chee, chee, chee. 

Modest and shy as a nun is she, 

One weak chirp is her only note, 

Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, 

Pouring boasts from his little throat: 
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link, 

Spink, spank, spink ; 

Never was I afraid of man ; 

Catch me, cowardly knaves if you can. 

Chee, chee, chee. 


OF LINCOLN. 

Six white eggs on a bed of hay, 

Flecked with purple, a pretty sight 
There as the mother sits all day, 

Robert is singing with all his might: 
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link, 

Spink, spank, spink ; 

Nice good wife, that never goes out, 
Keeping house while I frolic about. 

Chee, chee, chee. 

Soon as the little ones chip the shell 
Six wide mouths are open for food; 
Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well, 
Gathering seed for the hungry brood. 
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link, 

Spink, spank, spink ; 

This new life is likely to be 
Hard for a gay young fellow like me. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln at length is made 
Sober with work and silent with care; 
Off is his holiday garment laid, 
Half-forgotten that merry air, 
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link, 

Spink, spank, spink ; 

Nobody knows but my mate and I 
Where our nest and our nestlings lie. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Summer wanes ; the children are grown ; 

Fun and frolic no more he knows; 
Robert of Lincoln’s a humdrum crone; 
OIF he flies, and we sing as he goes: 
Bob-o’-link, bob-o'-link, 

Spink, spank, spink ; 

When you can pipe that merry old strain, 
Robert of Lincoln, come back again. 

Chee, chee, chee. 



+0+ 


DROUGHT. 



UNGED amid the limpid waters, 

Or the cooling shade beneath, 

Let me fly the scorching sunbeams, 
And the southwind’s sickly breath ! 


Sirius burns the parching meadows, 
Flames upon the embrowning hill, 
Dries the foliage of the forest, 

And evaporates the rill. 

















40 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


Scarce is seen the lonely floweret, 
Save amid the embowering wood; 
O’er the prospect dim and dreary, 
Drought presides in sullen mood ! 

Murky vapours hung in ether, 
Wrap in gloom, the sky serene; 


Nature pants distressful—silence 
Reigns o’er all the sultry scene. 

Then amid the limpid waters, 

Or beneath the cooling shade, 

Let me shun the scorching sunbeams 
And the sickly breeze evade. 


-K>*- 

THE PAST. 

No poet, perhaps, in the world is so exquisite in rhythm, or classically pure and accurate in language, so 
appropriate in diction, phrase or metaphor as Bryant. 

He dips his pen in words as an inspired painter his pencil in colors. The following poem is a fair specimen 
of his deep vein in his chosen serious themes. Pathos is pre-eminently his endowment but the tinge of 
melancholy in his treatment is always pleasing. 


HOU unrelenting Past! 

Strong are the barriers round thy dark 
domain, 

And fetters, sure and fast, 

Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. 

Far in thy realm withdrawn 
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom, 

And glorious ages gone 
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. 

Childhood, with all its mirth, 

Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the ground, 

And, last, Man’s Life on earth, 

Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound. 

Thou hast my better years, 

Thou hast my earlier friends—the good—the kind, 

Yielded to thee with tears,— 

The venerable form—the exalted mind. 

My spirit yearns to bring 
The lost ones back ;—yearns with desire intense, 

And struggles hard to wring 
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence. 

In vain :—thy gates deny 
All passage save to those who hence depart; 

Nor to the streaming eye 
Thou giv’st.them back,—nor to the broken heart. 

In thy abysses hide 

Beauty and excellence unknown :—to thee 

Earth’s wonder and her pride 
Are gather’d, as the waters to the sea; 


Labors of good to man, 

Unpublish’d charity, unbroken faith,— 

Love, that midst grief began, 

And grew with years, and falter’d not in death. 

Full many a mighty name 
Lurks in thy depths, unutter’d, unrevered; 

With thee are silent fame, 

Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappear’d. 

Thine for a space are they:— 

Yet shalt thou yield tliy treasures up at last; 

Thy gates shall yet give way, 

Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past! 

All that of good and fair 
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time, 
Shall then come forth, to wear 
The glory and the beauty of its prime. 

They have not perish’d—no ! 

Kind words, remember’d voices once so sweet, 
Smiles, radiant long ago, 

And features, the great soul's apparent seat, 

All shall come back; each tie 
Of pure affection shall be knit again; 

Alone shall Evil die, 

And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. 

And then shall I behold 
Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung, 

And her who, still and cold, 

Fills the next grave,—the beautiful and young. 



»< > ♦ - 

THE MURDERED TRAVELER. 


HEN spring, to woods and wastes around, 
Brought bloom and joy again ; 

The murdered traveler’s bones were found, 
Far down a narrow glen. 


The fragrant birch, above him, hung 
Her tassels in the sky ; 

And many a vernal blossom sprung, 
And nodded careless by. 

















WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


41 


The red bird warbled, as he wrought 
His hanging nest o’erhead ; 

And fearless, near the fatal spot, 

Her young the partridge led. 

But there was weeping far away, 

And gentle eyes, for him, 

With watching many an anxious day, 
Were sorrowful and dim. 

They little knew, who loved him so, 
The fearful death he met, 

When shouting o’er the desert snow, 
Unarmed and hard beset; 

Nor how, when round the frosty pole, 
The northern dawn was red, 


The mountain-wolf and wild-cat stole 
To banquet on the dead; 

Nor how, when strangers found his bones, 
They dressed the hasty bier, 

And marked his grave with nameless stones, 
Unmoistened by a tear. 

But long they looked, and feared, and wept, 
Within his distant home ; 

And dreamed, and started as they slept, 
For joy that he was come. 

Long, long they looked—but never spied 
His welcome step again. 

Nor knew the fearful death he died 
Far down that narrow glen. 




THE BATTLEFIELD. 


Soon after the following poem was written, an English critic, referring to the stanza begining—“Truth 
crushed to earth shall rise again,”—said : “Mr. Bryant has certainly a rare merit for having written a stanza 
which w 7 ill bear comparison with any four lines as one of the noblest in the English language. The thought 
is complete, the expression perfect. A poem of a dozen such verses would be like a row of pearls, each 
beyond a king’s ransom.” 


NCE this soft turf, this rivulet’s sands, 
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd, 
And fiery hearts and armed hands 
Encounter’d in the battle-cloud. 

Ah ! never shall the land forget 

How gush’d the life-blood of her brave,— 
Gush’d, warm with hope and courage yet, 

Upon the soil they fought to save. 

Now all is calm, and fresh, and still, 

Alone the chirp of flitting bird, 

And talk of children on the hill. 

And bell of wandering kine, are heard. 

No solemn host goes trailing by 

The black-mouth’d gun and staggering wain; 
Men start not at the battle-cry: 

Oh, be it never heard again ! 

Soon rested those who fought; but thou 
Who minglest in the harder strife 
For truths which men receive not now, 

Thy warfare only ends with life. 

A friendless warfare ! lingering long 
Through weary day and weary year; 


A wild and many-weapon’d throng 

Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear. 

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, 

And blench not at thy chosen lot; 

The timid good may stand aloof, 

The sage may frown—yet faint thou not, 

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast, 

The foul and hissing bolt of scorn ; 

For with thy side shall dwell, at last, 

The victory of endurance born. 

Truth, crush’d to earth, shall rise again ; 
The eternal years of God are hers ; 

But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, 

And dies among his worshippers. 

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust, 

When they who help’d thee flee in fear, 

Die full of hope and manly trust, 

Like those who fell in battle here. 

Another hand thy sword shall wield, 
Another hand the standard wave, 

Till from the trumpet’s mouth is peal’d 
The blast of triumph o’er thy grave. 









42 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


THE CROWDED STREETS. 


How fast the flitting figures come; 

The mild, the fierce, the stony face— 

Some bright, with thoughtless smiles, and some 
Where secret tears have left their trace. 

They pass to toil, to strife, to rest— 

To halls in which the feast is spread— 

To chambers where the funeral guest 
In silence sits beside the bed. 

And some to happy homes repair, 

Where children pressing cheek to cheek, 
With mute caresses shall declare 
The tenderness they cannot speak. 

And some who walk in calmness here, 

Shall shudder as they reach the door 
Where one who made their dwelling dear, 

Its flower, its light, is seen no more. 

Youth, with pale cheek and tender frame, 
And dreams of greatness in thine eye, 


Go’st thou to build an early name, 

Or early in the task to die ? 

Keen son of trade, with eager brow, 

Who is now fluttering in thy snare, 

Thy golden fortunes tower they now, 

Or melt the glittering spires in air ? 

Who of this crowd to-night shall tread 
The dance till daylight gleams again ? 

To sorrow o’er the untimely dead ? 

Who writhe in throes of mortal pain ? 

Some, famine struck, shall think how long 
The cold, dark hours, how slow the light; 

And some, who flaunt amid the throng, 

Shall hide in dens of shame to night. 

Each where his tasks or pleasure call, 

They pass and heed each other not; 

There is one who heeds, who holds them all 
In His large love and boundless thought. 

These struggling tides of life that seem 
In wayward, aimless course to tend, 

Are eddies of the mighty stream 
That rolls to its appointed end. 



ET me move slowly through the street, 
Filled with an ever-shifting train, 

Amid the sound of steps that beat 

The murmuring walks like autumn rain. 

O 


O 


NOTICE OF FITZ-GrREEN HALLECK. 

As a specimen of Mr. Bryant’s prose, of which he wrote much, and also as a sample of his criticism, we 
reprint the following extract from a Commemorative Address which he delivered before the New York His¬ 
torical Society in February 1869. This selection is also valuable as a character sketch and a literary 
estimate of Mr. Ilalleck. 


HEN I look back upon Halleck’s literary life, 
I cannot help thinking that if his death had 
happened forty years earlier, his life 
would have been regarded as a bright morning 
prematurely overcast. Yet Halleck’s literary career 
may be said to have ended then. All that will hand 
down his name to future years had already been 
produced. Who shall say to what cause his subse¬ 
quent literary inaction was owing? It was not the 
decline of his powers; his brilliant conversation 
showed that it was not. Was it then indifference to 
fame ? Was it because he put an humble estimate 
on what he had written, and therefore resolved to 
write no more ? Was it because he feared lest what 
he might write would be unworthy of the reputation 
he had been so fortunate as to acquire ? 

“ I have my own way of accounting for his literary 



silence in the latter half of his life. One of the 
resemblances which he bore to Horace consisted in 
the length of time for which he kept his poems by 
him, that he might give them the last and happiest 
touches. Having composed his poems without com¬ 
mitting them to paper, and retaining them in his 
faithful memory, he revised them in the same manner, 
murmuring them to himself in his solitary moments, 
recovering the enthusiasm with which they were 
first conceived, and in this state of mind heighten¬ 
ing the beauty of the thought or of the expres¬ 
sion. 

“ In this way I suppose Ilalleck to have attained 
the gracefulness of his diction, and the airy melody 
of his numbers. In this way I believe that he 
wrought up his verses to that transparent clearness 
of expression which causes the thought to be seen 













WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


43 


through them without any interposing dimness, so 
that the thought and the phrase seem one, and the 
thought enters the mind like a beam of light. I 
suppose that Halleck s time being taken up by the 


tasks of his vocation, he naturally lost by degrees the 
habit of composing in this manner, and that he 
found it so necessary to the perfection of what he 
wrote that he adopted no other in its place.” 


-- 

A CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 

From “ The Letters of a Traveler .” 

In 1843, during Mr. Bryant’s visit to the South, he had the pleasure of witnessing one of those ante- 
helium southern institutions known as aCorn-Shucking—one of the ideal occasions of the colored man’s 
life, to wiiich both men and women were invited. They were free to tell all the jokes, sing all the songs 
and have all the fun they desired as they rapidly shucked the corn. Two leaders were usually chosen and 
the company divided into two parties wiiich competed for a prize awarded to the first party which 
finished shucking the allotted pile of corn. Mr. Bryant thus graphically describes one of these novel 
occasions: 


Barnwell District, ) 
South Carolina, March 29, 1843. j 

UT you must hear of the corn-shucking. 
The one at which I was present was given 
on purpose that I might witness the hu¬ 
mors of the Carolina negroes. A huge fire of light- 
wood was made near the corn-house. Light-wood 
is the wood of the long-leaved pine, and is so called, 
not because it is light, for it is almost the heaviest 
wood in the w r orld, but because it gives more light 
than any other fuel. 

The light-wood-fire w r as made, and the negroes 
dropped in from the neighboring plantations, singing 
as they came. The driver of the plantation, a col¬ 
ored man, brought out baskets of corn in the husk, 
and piled it in a heap ; and the negroes began to 
strip the husks from the ears, singing w r ith great 
glee as they w T orked, keeping time to the music, and 
now and then throwing in a joke and an extravagant 
burst of laughter. The songs were generally of a 
comic character; but one of them was set to a sin¬ 
gularly wild and plaintive air, which some of our 
musicians would do w r ell to reduce to notation. 
These are the words: 

Johnny come down de hollow. 

Oh hollow ! 

Johnny come down de hollow. 

Oh hollow ! 

De nigger-trader got me. 

Oh hollow! 

De speculator bought me. 

Oh hollow ! 

I’m sold for silver dollars. 

Oh hollow ! 



Boys, go catch the pony. 

Oh hollow! 

Bring him round the corner. 

Oh hollow ! 

I’m goin’ away to Georgia. 

Oh hollow ! 

Boys, good-by forever! 

Oh hollow ! 

The song of “ Jenny gone away,” was also given, 
and another, called the monkey-song, probably of 
African origin, in which the principal singer person¬ 
ated a monkey, with all sorts of odd gesticulations, 
and the other negroes bore part in the chorus, “ Dan, 
dan, w r ho’s the dandv?” One of the songs com- 
monly sung on these occasions, represents the various 
animals of the woods as belonging to some profession 
or trade. For example— 

De cooter is de boatman— 

The cooter is the terrapin, and a very expert boat¬ 
man he is. 

De cooter is de boatman. 

John John Crow. 

De red-bird de soger. 

John John Crow. 

De mocking-bird de lawyer. 

John John Crow. 

De alligator sawyer 

John John Crow. 

The alligator’s back is furnished with a toothed 

ridge, like the edge of a saw, which explains the 
last line. 











44 


WILLIAM CULLEN BKYANT. 


When the work of the evening was over the 
negroes adjourned to a spacious kitchen. One of 
them took his place as musician, whistling, and beat¬ 
ing time with two sticks upon the floor. Several of 
the men came forward and executed various dances, 
capering, prancing, and drumming with heel and toe 
upon the floor, with astonishing agility and persever¬ 
ance, though all of them had performed their daily 
tasks and had worked all the evening, and some had 
walked from four to seven miles to attend the corn- 
shucking. From the dances a transition was made 
to a mock military parade, a sort of burlesque of our 
militia trainings, in which the words of command 
and the evolutions were extremely ludicrous. It be¬ 
came necessary for the commander to make a speech, 
and confessing his incapacity for public speaking, he 
called upon a huge black man named Toby to ad¬ 


dress the company in his stead. Toby, a man of 
powerful frame, six feet high, his face ornamented 
with a beard of fashionable cut, had hitherto stood 
leaning against the wall, looking upon the frolic with 
an air of superiority. He consented, came forward, 
demanded a bit of paper to hold in his hand, and 
harangued the soldiery. It was evident that Toby 
had listened to stump-speeches in his day. lie spoke 
of “ de majority of Sous Carolina,” “ de interests of 
de state,” “ de honor of ole Ba’nwell district,” and 
these phrases he connected by various expletives, and 
sounds of which we could make nothing. At length 
he began to falter, when the captain with admirable 
presence of mind came to his relief, and interrupted 
and closed the harangue with an hurrah from the 
company. Toby was allowed by all the spectators, 
black and white, to have made an excellent speech. 



CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 














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EDGAR ALLEN POE. 

THE WEIRD AND MYSTERIOUS GENIUS. 

DGAR ALLEN POE, the author of “ The Raven,” “ Annabel Lee,” 
“The Haunted Palace,” “To One in Paradise,” “ Israfel” and 
“ Lenore,” was in his peculiar sphere, the most brilliant writer, per¬ 
haps, who ever lived. His writings, however, belong to a different 
world of thought from that in which Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, 
Whittier and Lowell lived and labored. Theirs was the realm of 
nature, of light, of human joy, of happiness, ease, hope and cheer. Poe spoke 
from the dungeon of depression. He was in a constant struggle with poverty. His 
whole life was a tragedy in which sombre shades played an unceasing role, and yet 
from out these weird depths came forth things so beautiful that their very sadness 
is charming and holds us in a spell of bewitching enchantment. Edgar Fawcett 
says of him :— 

“ He loved all shadowy spots, all seasons drear; 

All ways of darkness lured his ghastly whim ; 

Strange fellowships he held with goblins grim, 

At whose demoniac eyes he felt no fear. 

By desolate paths of dream where fancy’s owl 
Sent long lugubrious hoots through sombre air, 

Amid thought’s gloomiest caves he went to prowl 
And met delirium in her awful lair.” 

Edgar Poe was born in Boston February 19th, 1809. His father was a Mary¬ 
lander, as was also his grandfather, who was a distinguished Revolutionary soldier 
and a friend of General Lafayette. The parents of Poe were both actors who toured 
the country in the ordinary manner, and this perhaps accounts for his birth in 
Boston. Their home was in Baltimore, Maryland. 

When Poe was only a few years old both parents died, within two weeks, in 
Richmond, Virginia. Their three children, two daughters, one older and one 
younger than the subject of this sketch, were all adopted bv friends of the family. 
Mr. John Allen, a rich tobacco merchant of Richmond, Virginia, adopted Edgar 
(who was henceforth called Edgar Allen Poe), and had him carefully educated, first 
in England, afterwards at the Richmond Academy and the University of Virginia, 

45 














































46 


EDGAR ALLEN POE. 


and subsequently at West Point. He always distinguished himself in his studies, 
but from West Point he was dismissed after one year, it is said because he refused to 
submit to the discipline of the institution. 

In common with the custom in the University of Virginia at that time, Poe 
acquired the habits of drinking and gambling, and the gambling debts which he 
contracted incensed Mr. Allen, who refused to pay them. This brought on the 
beginning of a series of quarrels which finally led to Poe’s disinheritance and per¬ 
manent separation from his benefactor. Thus turned out upon the cold, unsympa¬ 
thetic world, without business training, without friends, without money, knowing 
not how to make money—yet, with a proud, imperious, aristocratic nature,—we have 
the beginning of the saddest story of any life in literature—struggling for nearly 
twenty years in gloom and poverty, with here and there a ray of sunshine, and 
closing with delirium tremens in Baltimore, October 7tli, 1849, at forty years of age. 

To those who know the full details of the sad story of Poe’s life it is little wonder 
that his sensitive, passionate nature sought surcease from disappointment in the 
nepenthe of the intoxicating cup. It was but natural for a man of his nervous 
temperament and delicacy of feeling to fall into that melancholy moroseness which 
would chide even the angels for taking away his beautiful “ Annabel Lee;” or that 
he should wail over the “ Lost Lenore,” or declare that his soul should “nevermore” 
be lifted from the shadow of the “ Haven” upon the floor. These poems and others 
are but the expressions of disappointment and despair of a soul alienated from 
happy human relations. While we admire their power and beauty, we should 
remember at what cost of pain and suffering and disappointment they were produced. 
They are powerful illustrations of the prodigal expense of human strength, of 
broken hopes and bitter experiences through which rare specimens of our literature 
are often grown. 

To treat the life of Edgar Allen Poe, with its lessons, fully, would require the 
scope of a volume. Both as a man and an author there is a sad fascination which 
belongs to no other writer, perhaps, in the world. His personal character has been 
represented as pronouncedly double. It is said that Stevenson, who was a great 
admirer of Poe, received the inspiration for his novel, “ I)r. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” 
from the contemplation of his double character. Paul Hamilton Hayne lias also 
written a poem entitled, “ Poe,” which presents in a double shape the angel and 
demon in one body. The first two stanzas of which we quote:—- 


“ Two mighty spirits dwelt in him •. 
One, a wild demon, weird and dim, 
The darkness of whose ebon wings 
Did shroud unutterable things : 
One, a fair angel, in the skies 
Of whose serene, unshadowed eyes 
Were seen the lights of Paradise. 


To these, in turn, he gave the whole 
Vast empire of his brooding soul ; 

Now, filled with strains of heavenly swell. 
Now thrilled with awful tones of hell: 
Wide were his being’s strange extremes, 
’Twixt nether glooms, and Eden gleams 
Of tender, or majestic dreams.” 


EEGAR ALLEN POE. 


47 


' It must be said in justice to Poe’s memory, however, that the above idea of his 
being both demon and angel became prevalent through the first biography pub¬ 
lished of him, by Dr. Rufus Griswold, who no doubt sought to avenge himself on 
the dead poet for the severe but unanswerable criticisms which the latter had 
passed upon his and other contemporaneous authors’ writings. Later biographies, 
notably those of J. H. Ingram and Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman, as well as pub¬ 
lished statements from his business associates, have disproved many of Griswold’s 
damaging statements, and placed the private character of Poe in a far more favor¬ 
able light before the world. He left off gambling in his youth, and the appetite 
for drink, which followed him to the close of his life, was no doubt inherited from 
his father who, before him, was a drunkard. 

It is natural for admirers of Poe’s genius to contemplate with regret akin to sor¬ 
row those circumstances and characteristics which made him so unhappy, and yet 
the serious question arises, was not that character and his unhappy life necessary to 
the productions of his marvelous pen ? Let us suppose it was, and in charity draw 
the mantle of forgetfulness over his misguided ways, covering the sad picture of his 
personal life from view, and hang in its place the matchless portrait of his splendid 
genius, before which, with true American pride, we may summon all the world to 
stand Avitli uncovered heads. 

As a writer of short stories Poe had no equal in America. He is said to have 
been the originator of the modern detective story. The artful ingenuity with which 
he works up the details of his plot, and minute attention to the smallest illustrative 
particular, give his tales a vivid interest from which no reader can escape. His 
skill in analysis is as marked as his power of word painting. The scenes of gloom 
and terror which he loves to depict, the forms of horror to which he gives almost 
actual life, render his mastery over the reader most exciting and absorbing. 

As a poet Poe ranks among the most original in the world. He is pre-eminently 
a poet of the imagination. It is useless to seek in his verses for philosophy or 
preaching. He brings into his poetry all the weirdness, subtlety, artistic detail and 
facility in coloring which give the charm to his prose stories, and to these he adds, 
a musical flow of language which has never been equalled. To him poetry was 
music, and there was no poetry that was not musical. For poetic harmony he lias 
had no equal certainly in America, if, indeed, in the world. Admirers of his poems 
are almost sure to read them over and over again, each time finding new forms of 
beauty or charm in them, and the reader abandons himself to a current of melodious 
fancy that soothes and charms like distant music at night, or the rippling of a near¬ 
by, but unseen, brook. The images which he creates are vague and illusive. As 
one of his biographers has written, “ He heard in his dreams the tinkling footfalls 
of angels and seraphim and subordinated everything in his verse to the delicious 
effect of musical sound.” As a literary critic Poe’s capacities were of the greatest. 
“ In that large part of the critic’s perceptions,” says Duyckinck, “ in knowledge of 
the mechanism of composition, he has been unsurpassed by any writer in America.” 

Poe was also a fine reader and elocutionist. A writer who attended a lecture by 
him in Richmond says : “ I never heard a voice so musical as his. It was full of 

the sweetest melody. No one who heard his recitation of the “ Raven” will ever 
forget the beauty and pathos with which this recitation was rendered. The 


48 


EDGAR ALLEN POE. 


audience was still as death, and as his weird, musical voice filled the hall its effect 
was simply indescribable. It seems to me that I can yet hear that long, plaintive 
“ nevermore.” 

Among the labors of Poe, aside from his published volumes and contributions to 
miscellaneous magazines, should be mentioned his various positions from 1834 to 1848 
as critic and editor on the “ Literary Messenger ” of Richmond, Virginia, the 
“Gentleman’s Magazine” of Philadelphia, “ Graham’s Magazine ” of Philadelphia, 
the “ Evening Mirror” of New York, and the “Broadway Journal” of New York, 
which positions he successively held. The last he gave up in 1848 with the idea of 
starting a literary magazine of his own, but the project failed, perhaps on account 
of his death, which occurred the next year. His first volume of poems was pub¬ 
lished in 1829. In 1833 he won two prizes, one for prose and one for poetic com¬ 
position, offered by the Baltimore “ Saturday Visitor,” his “ Manuscript Found in 
a Bottle” being awarded the prize for prose and the poem “The Coliseum” for 
poetry. The latter, however, he did not recieve because the judges found the same 
author had won them both. In 1838 Harper Brothers published his ingenious 
fiction, “ The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.” In 1840 “ Tales 
of the Grotesque and Arabesque” were issued in Philadelphia. In 1844 he took 
up his residence at Fordham, New York, where his wife died in 1847, and where he 
continued to reside for the balance of his life. His famous poem the “ Raven ” was 
published in 1845, and during 1848 and 1849 he published “Eureka” and 
“ Ulalume,” the former being a prose poem. It is the crowning work of his life, to 
which he devoted the last and most matured energies of his wonderful intellect. 
To those who desire a further insight into the character of the man and his labors 
we would recommend the reading of J. H. Ingram’s “Memoir” and Mrs. Sarah 
Ellen Whitman’s “ Edgar Poe and His Critics,” the latter published in 1863. 




EDGAR ALLEN POE 


49 





THE CITY IN THE SEA. 


THE CITY IN THE SEA. 

• 

0 ! Death has rear’d himself a throne 
In a strange city lying alone 
Far down within the dim west, < 
Where the good and the bad and 

worst and the best 
Have gone to their eternal rest. 

There "shrines, and palaces, and towers, 
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) 

Resemble nothing that is ours. 

Around, by lifting winds forgot, 

Resignedly beneath the sky 
The melancholy waters lie. 

No rays from the holy heaven come down 
On the long night-time of that town ; 

But light from" out the lurid sea 

4 



the 


Streams up the turrets silently— 

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free— 
Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls— 
Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls— 

Up shadowy, long-forgotten bowers 
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers— 
Up many and many a marvellous shrine 
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine 
The viol, the violet, and the vine. 
Resignedly beneath the sky 
The "melancholy waters lie. 

So blend the turrets and shadows there 
That all seem pendulous in air, 

While from a proud tower in the town 
Death looks gigantically down. 

There open fanes and gaping graves 
Yawn level with the luminous waves; 















































































50 


EDGAR ALLEN POE. 


But not the riches there that lie 
In each idol’s diamond eye— 

Not the gayly-jewell’d dead 
Tempt the waters from their bed; 

For no ripples curl, alas! 

Along that wilderness of glass— 

No swellings tell that winds may be 
Upon some far-off happier sea— 

No hearings hint that winds have been 
On seas less hideously serene. 

But lo, a stir is in the air! 


The wave—-there is a movement there ! 
As if the towers had thrust aside, 

In slightly sinking, the dull tide— 

As if their tops had feebly given 
A void within the filmy heaven. 

The waves have now a redder glow— 
The hours are breathing faint and low— 
And when, amid no earthly moans, 

Down, down that town shall settle hence, 
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, 
Shall do it reverence. 


-<>o« 


ANNABEL LEE. 


T was many and many a year ago, 

In a kingdom by the sea, 

That a maiden there lived whom you may 
know 

By the name of Annabel Lee ; 

And this maiden she lived with no other thought 
Than to love and be loved by me. 

I was a child and she was a child, 

In this kingdom by the sea ; 

But we loved with a love that was more than love— 
I and my Annabel Lee— 

. With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 
Coveted her and me. 

And this was the reason that, long ago, 

In this kingdom by the sea, 

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 
My beautiful Annabel Lee ; 

So that her highborn kinsman came 
And bore her a wav from me, 

To shut her up in a sepulchre, 

In this kingdom by the sea. 


The angels, not half so happy in heaven, 

Went envying her and me— 

Yes !—that was the reason (as all men know, 

In this kingdom by the sea), 

That the wind came out of the cloud by night, 
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. 

But our love it was stronger by far than the love 
Of those who were older than we— 

Of many far wiser than we— 

And neither the angels in heaven above, 

Nor the demons down under the sea, 

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: 

For the moon never beams, without bringing me 
dreams 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; 

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes 
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee : 

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, 
in her sepulchre there by the sea— 

In her tomb by the sounding sea. 



-•O 


TO HELEN. 


The following poem was published first “To-afterwards the title was changed, “To Helen.” It 

seems to have been written by Poe to Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman whom many years afterwards he was 
engaged to marry. The engagement was, however, broken off. The poem was no doubt written before his 
acquaintance with the lady; even before his marriage or engagement to his wife, and at a time perhaps 
when he did not expect to be recognized as a suitor by the unknown woman who had completely captured 
his heart, in the chance meeting which he here so beautifully describes. 


SAW thee once—once only—years ago : 

I must not say how many—but not many. 
It was a July midnight; and from out 
A full-orbed moon that, like thine own soul, 
soaring, 

Sought a precipitant pathway up through heaven, 
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, 

With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, 

Upon the upturned faces of a thousand 



Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, 

Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe— 
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses 
That gave out, in return for the love-light, 

Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death— 

Fell on the upturned faces of these roses 
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted 
By thee and by the poetry of thy presence. 



















EDGAR ALLEN POE. 


51 



CLAD ALL IN WHITE, UPON A VIOLET BANK 
I SAW THEE HALF RECLINING ; WHILE THE MOON 
FELL ON THE UPTURNED FACES OF THE ROSES, 

AND ON THINE OWN, UPTURNED—ALAS ! IN SORROW. 


Was it not Fate that, on this July midnight— 
W as it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow) 
That bade me pause before that garden-gate 
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses ? 
No footstep stirred : the hated world all slept, 
Save only thee and me. I paused—I looked— 
And in an instant all things disappeared. 

(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) 
The pearly lustre of the moon went out: 

The mossy banks and the meandering paths, 

The happy flowers and the repining trees, 

Were seen no more: the very roses’ odors 
Died in the arms of the adoring airs. 

All, all expired save thee—save less than thou: 
Save only the divine light in thine eyes— 

Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. 

I saw but them—they were the world to me. 

I saw but them—saw only them for hours— 

Saw only them until the moon went down. 

What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten 


Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! 

How dark a wo, yet how sublime a hope! 

How silently serene a sea of pride ! 

How daring an ambition ! yet how deep— 

How fathomless a capacity for love ! 

But now. at length, dear Dian sank from sight 
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud, 

And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees 
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. 
They would not go—they never yet have gone. 
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, 
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. 
They follow me, they lead me through the years; 
They are my ministers—yet I their slave. 

Their office is to illumine and enkindle— 

My duty, to be saved by their bright light, 

And purified in their electric fire— 

And sanctified in their elysian fire. 

They fill my soul with beauty (which is hope), 





52 


EDGAK ALLEN POE. 


And are far up in heaven, the stars I kneel to 
In the sad, silent watches of my night; 

While even in the meridian glare of day 


I see them still—two sweetly scintillant 
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun ! 


-♦O* 


ISRAFEL.* 


heaven a spirit doth dwell 
“ Whose heart-strings are a lute ; ” 
None sing so wildly well 
As the angel Israfel, 

And the giddy stars (so legends tell) 
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell 
Of his voice, all mute. 

'Tottering above 

In her highest noon, 

The enamour’d moon 
Rlushes with love, 

While, to listen, the red levin 
(With the rapid Pleiads, even, 

Which were seven) 

Pauses in heaven. 

And they say (the starry choir 
And the other listening things) 

That Israfeli’s fire 
Is owing to that lyre 

By which he sits and sings— 

The trembling living wire 
Of those unusual strings. 

But the skies that angel trod, 

Where deep thoughts are a duty— 
Where Love’s a grown-up god— 



Where the Houri glances are 
Imbued with all the beauty 
Which we worship in a star. 

Therefore, thou art not wrong, 

Israfeli, who despisest 
An unimpassion’d song; 

To thee the laurels belong, 

Best bard, because the wisest! 

Merrily live, and long! 

The ecstasies above 

With thy burning measures suit— 

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, 
With the fervor of thy lute— 

Well may the stars be mute! 

Yes, heaven is thine ; but this 
Is a world of sweets and sours ; 

Our flowers are merely—flowers, 

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss 
Is the sunshine of ours. 

If I could dwell 
Where Israfel 

Hath dwelt, and he where I, 

He might not sing so wildly well 
A mortal melody, 

While a bolder note than this might swell 
From my lyre within the sky. 




TO ONE IN PARADISE. 


OU wast all that to me, love, 

For which my soul did pine— 

A green isle in the sea, love, 

A fountain and a shrine, 

All wreath’d with fairy fruits and flowers, 
And all the flowers were mine. 

Ah, dream too bright to last! 

Ah, starry Hope ! that didst arise 
But to be overcast! 

A voice from out the Future cries, 

“ On ! on ! ”—but o’er the Past 

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies 
Mute, motionless, aghast! 



For, alas! alas! with me 
The light of life is o’er! 

No more—no more—no more— 
(Such language holds the solemn sea 
To the sands upon the shore) 

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, 
Or the stricken eagle soar ! 

And all my days are trances, 

And all my nightly dreams 
Are where thy dark eye glances, 

And where thy footstep gleams— 
In what ethereal dances, 

By what eternal streams. 


And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.” 

Koran. 




















EDGAR ALLEN POE. 


53 


LENORE. 


Mrs. Whitman, in her reminiscences of Poe, tells us the following incident which gave rise to the writing 
of these touching lines. While Poe was in the Academy at Richmond, Virginia,—as yet a boy of about 
sixteen years,—he was invited by a friend to visit his home. The mother of this friend was a singularly 
beautiful and withal a most kindly and sympathetic woman. Having learned that Poe was an orphan she 
greeted him with the motherly tenderness and affection shown toward her own son. The boy was so over¬ 
come that it is said he stood for a miuute unable to speak and finally with tears he declared he had never 
before known his loss in the love of a true and devoted mother. From that time forward he was frequently 
a visitor, and the attachment between him and this kind-hearted woman continued to grow. On Poe’s 
return from Europe when he was about twenty years of age, he learned that she had died a few days before 
his arrival, and was so overcome with grief that he went nightly to her grave, even when it was dark and 
rainy, spending hours in fancied communion with her spirit. Later he idealized in his musings the embodi¬ 
ment of such a spirit in a young and beautiful woman, whom he made his lover and whose untimely death 
he imagined and used as the inspiration of this poem. 


H, broken is the golden bowl, 

The spirit flown forever! 

Let the bell toll! 

A saintly soul 
Floats on the Stygian river; 

And, Guy de Vere, 

Hast thou no tear? 

Weep now or never more ! • 

See, on yon drear 
And rigid bier 

Low lies thy love, Lenore ! 

Come, let the burial-rite be read— 

The funeral-song be sung !— 

An anthem for the queenliest dead 
That ever died so young— 

A dirge for her the doubly dead, 

In that she died so young! 

“ Wretches ! ye loved her for her wealth, 

And hated her for her pride ; 

And when she fell in feeble health, 

Ye bless’d her—that she died ! 

How shall the ritual, then, be read? 

The requiem how be sung 
By you—by yours, the evil eye— 

By yours the slanderous tongue 
That did to death the innocence 
That died, and died so young? ” 

Peccavimus ; 

But rave not thus ! 

And let a sabbath song 

Go up to God so solemnly, the dead may feel no 
wrong! 



The sweet Lenore 
Hath “gone before,” 

With Hope, that flew beside, 
Leaving thee wild 
For the dear child 

That should have been thy bride— 
For her, the fair 
And debonair , 

That now so lowly lies, 

The life upon her yellow hair 
But not within her eyes— 

The life still there, 

Upon her hair— 

The death upon her eyes. 

“ Avaunt! to-night 
My heart is light. 

No dirge will I upraise, 

But waft the angel on her flight 
With a paean of old days ! 

Let no bell toll!— 

Lest her sweet soul, 

Amid its hallow’d mirth, 

Should catch the note, 

As it doth float— 

Up from the damned earth. 

To friends above, from fiends below, 
The indignant ghost is riven— 
From hell unto a high estate 
Far up within the heaven— 

From grief and groan, 

To a golden throne, 

Beside the King of Heaven.” 


THE BELLS. 


This selection is a favorite with reciters. It is an excellent piece for voice culture. The musical flow of 
the metre and happy selection of the words make it possible for the skilled speaker to closely imitate the 
sounds of the ringing bells. 



EAR the sledges with the bells— 

Silver bells! 

What a world of merriment their melody 
foretells! 


How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 

In the icy air of night! 

While the stars that oversprinkle 
All the heavens, seem to twinkle 
















54 


EDGAR ALLEN POE. 


With a crystalline delight; 

Keeping time, time, time, 

In a sort of Runic rhyme, 

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 

Bells, bells, bells— 

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 

Hear the mellow wedding bells— 

Golden bells! 

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells ! 
Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight ! 

From the molten-golden notes, 

And all in tune, 

What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats 
On the moon ! 

Oh, from out the sounding cells, 

What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! 

How it swells ! 

How it dwells. 

On the future ! how it tells 
Of the rapture that impels 
To the swinging and the ringing 
Of the bells, bells, bells.— 

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 

Bells, bells, bells— 

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! 

Hear the loud alarum bells— 

Brazen bells! 

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells 
In the startled ear of night 
How they scream out their affright! 

Too much horrified to speak, 

They can only shriek, shriek. 

Out of tune, 

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, 

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire 
Leaping higher, higher, higher, 

With a desperate desire, 

And a resolute endeavor, 

Now—now to sit or never, 

By the side of the pale-faced moon. 

’ Oh, the bells, bells, bells ! 

What a tale their terror tells 
Of despair! 

How they clang, and clash, and roar ! 

What a horror they outpour 
On the bosom of the palpitating air ! 

Yet the ear it fully knows, 

By the twanging, 

And the clanging, 

How the danger ebbs and flows; 


Yet the ear distinctly tells, 

In the jangling 
And the wrangling, 

How the danger sinks and swells, 

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the 

bells— 

Of the bells— 

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 

Bells, bells, bells— 

In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! 

Hear the tolling of the bells— 

Iron bells! 

What a world of solemn thought their monody 

compels! 

In the silence of the night, 

How we shiver with affright, 

At the melancholy menace of their tone! 

For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 
Is a groan. 

And the people—ah, the people— 

They that dwell up in the steeple, 

All alone, 

And who tolling, tolling, tolling, 

In that muffled monotone, 

Feel a glory in so rolling 
On the human heart a stone— , 

They are neither man nor woman— 

They are neither brute nor human— 

They are ghouls: 

And their king it is who tolls; 

And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls, 

A psean from the bells! 

And his merry bosom swells 
With the psean of the bells! 

And he dances and he yells; 

Keeping time, time, time, 

In a sort of Runic rhyme, 

To the paean of the bells— 

Of the bells ; 

Keeping time, time, time, 

In a sort of Runic rhyme, 

To the throbbing of the bells— 

Of the bells, bells, bells, 

To the sobbing of the bells ; 

Keeping time, time, time. 

As he knells, knells, knells, 

In a happy Runic rhyme, 

To the rolling cf the bells,— 

Of the bells, bells, bells,— 

To the tolling of the bells, 

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,— 

Bells, bells, bells,— 

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells 







EDGAR ALLEN ROE 


55 


THE RAVEN. 

This poem is generally allowed to be one of the most remarkable examples of a harmony of sentiment 
with rhythmical expression to be found in any language. While the poet sits musing in his study, endeavor¬ 
ing to win from books “surcease of sorrow for the lost Lenore,” a raven—the symbol of despair_enters 

the room and perches upon a bust of Pallas. A colloquy follows between the poet and the bird of ill omen 
with its haunting croak of “Nevermore.” 



THE RAVEN. 

r 


NCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pon¬ 
dered, weak and weary, 

Over many a quaint and curious volume 
of forgotton lore,— 

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly 
there came a tapping, 

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at 
my chamber-door. 

“ ’Tis some visitor,” I mutter’d, “ tapping 
at my chamber-door— 

Only this and nothing more.” 

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak De¬ 
cember, 



And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost 
upon the floor. 

Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought 
to borrow 

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the 
lost Lenore,— 

For the rare and raidant maiden whom the angels 

© 

name Lenore,— 

Nameless here forevermore. 

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple 
curtain, 

Thrilled me,—filled me with fantastic terrors never 
felt before; 
























































56 


EDGAR ALLEN POE. 


So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood 
repeating, 

“ ’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber- 
door,— 

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber- 
door ; 

That it is, and nothing more.” 

Presently my soul grew stronger : hesitating then no 
longer, 

“ Sir,” said I, “ or Madam, truly your forgiveness I 
implore; 

But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you 
came rapping, 

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my 
chamber-door, 

That I scarce was sure I heard you ”—here I opened 
wide the door: 

Darkness there, and nothing more. 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, 
wondering, fearing, 

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to 
dream before; 

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave 
no token, 

And the only word there spoken was the whispered 
word, “ Lenore ! ” 

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the 
word, u Lenore ! ” 

Merely this, and nothing more. 

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within 
me burning, 

Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than 
before. 

“ Surely,” said I, “ surely that is something at my 
window-lattice; 

Let me see then what thereat is and this mystery 
explore,— 

Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery 
explore;— 

’Tis the wind, and nothing more.” 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a 
flirt and flutter, 

In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days 
of yore. 

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute 
stopped or stayed he; 

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my 
chamber-door,— 

Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my cham¬ 
ber-door— 

Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

Then this ebon bird beguiling my sad fancy into 
smiling, 


By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance 
it wore, 

“ Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I 
said, “ art sure no craven ; 

Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the 
nightly shore, 

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night’s Plu¬ 
tonian shore ? ” 

Quoth the raven, “ Nevermore ! ” 

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse 
so plainly, 

Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy 
bore; 

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human 
being 

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his 
chamber-door, 

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his 
chamber-door 

With such name as “ Nevermore ! ” 

But the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke 
only 

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did 
outpour. 

Nothing further then he uttered ; not a feather then 
he fluttered— 

Till I scarcely more than muttered, “ Other friends 
have flown before. 

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have 
flown before. 

Then the bird said, “ Nevermore ! ” 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly 
spoken, 

“ Doubtless,” said I, 11 what it utters is its only stock 
and store, 

Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful 
disaster 

Follow’d fast and follow’d faster, till his songs one 
burden bore, 

Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden 
bore, 

Of—‘ Never—nevermore ! ’ ” 

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into 
smiling, 

Straight I wheeled a -cushioned seat in front of bird 
and bust and door, 

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to 
linking 

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird 
of yore— 

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and omi¬ 
nous bird of yore 

Meant in croaking “ Nevermore ! ” 



EDGAR ALLEN POE. 5? 


This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable ex¬ 
pressing 

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my 
bosom's core; 

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease 
reclining 

On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light 
gloated o’er, 

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light 
gloating o’er 

She shall press—ah ! nevermore ! 

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from 
an unseen censer 

Swung by seraphim, whose foot-falls tinkled on the 
tufted floor, 

“Wretch,” I cried, “ thy God hath lent thee,—by 
these angels he hath sent thee 

Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of 
Lenore! 

Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget the 
lost Lenore! ” 

Quoth the raven, “ Nevermore ! ” 

Prophet! ” cried I, “ thing of evil!—prophet still, if 
bird or devil! 

Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed 
thee here ashore, 

Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land en¬ 
chanted— 

On this home by horror haunted—tell me truly, I 
implore,— 

Is there—is there balm in Gilead ?—tell me—tell 
me, I implore ! ” 

Quoth the raven, “ Nevermore ! ” 


“ Prophet! ” cried I, “ thing of evil!—prophet still, if 
bird or devil! 

By that heaven that bends above us, by that God we 
both adore, 

Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if within the distant 
Aidenn, 

It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels 
name Lenore; 

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels 
name Lenore ! ” 

Quoth the raven, “ Nevermore ! ” 

“ Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend ! ” I 
shrieked, upstarting,— 

“Get thee back into the tempest and the night’s 
Plutonian shore! 

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul 
hath spoken ! 

Leave my loneliness unbroken !—quit the bust above 
my door! 

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form 
from off my door ! ” 

Quoth the raven, “ Nevermore ! ” 

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is 
sitting 

On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber- 
door ; 

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that 
is dreaming, 

And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his 
shadow on the floor; 

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating 
on the floor 

Shall be lifted—nevermore ! 







HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


THE POET OF THE PEOPLE. 

u He who sung to one clear harp in divers tones” 

j^" an old square wooden house upon the edge of the sea” the most 
famous and most widely read of all American poets was born in 
Portland, Maine, February 7th, 1807. 

In his personality, his wide range of themes, his learning and his 
wonderful power of telling stories in song, Henry Wadsworth 
Longfellow stood in his day and still stands easily in front of all 
other poets who have enriched American literature. Admitting that he was not 
rugged and elemental like Pryant and did not possess the latter’s feelings for 
the colossal features of wild scenery, that he was not profoundly thoughtful 
and transcendental like Emerson, that he was not so earnestly and" passionately 
sympathetic as Whittier, nevertheless he was our first artist in poetry. Bryant 
Emerson and Whittier commanded but a few stops of the grand" instrument 
upon which they played; Longfellow understood perfectly all its capabilities. 
Critics also say that “he had not the high ideality or dramatic power of 
Tennyson or Browning.” But does he not hold something else which to the world 
at large is perhaps more valuable? Certainly these two great poets are inferior to 
mm m the power to sweep the chords of daily human experiences and call forth the 
sweetness and beauty in common-place every day human life. It is on these themes 
that he tuned his harp without ever a false tone, and sang with a harmony so well nigh 
perfect that the universal heart responded to his music. This common-place son- 
has found a lodgement in every household in America, “ swaying the hearts of men 

and women whose sorrows have been soothed and whose lives raised bv his -entle 
verse. J ° 

u Such songs have power to quiet 
The restless pulse of care, 

And come like the benediction 
That follows after prayer.” 



txt . -I t . ^ I "I ’s life from the very beginning moved on even lines. Both he and 
William Cullen Bryant were descendants of John Alden, whom Longfellow has 
made famous m “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” The Longfellows were a 
family in comfortable circumstances, peaceful and honest, for many generations back 

58 























INTERIOR OF LONGFELLOW’S HOME, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



■■■. ■■■ 


















HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


59 


The poet went to school with Nathaniel P. Willis and other boys who at an early 
age were thinking more of verse making than of pleasure. He graduated at Bow- 
doin College in 1825 with Nathaniel Hawthorne, John S. C. Abbott, and others 
who afterwards attained to fame. Almost immediately after his graduation he was 
requested to take the chair of Modern Languages and Literature in his alma mater , 
which he accepted; but before entering upon his duties spent three years in Ger- 
many, France, Spain and Italy to further perfect himself in the languages and 
literature of those nations. At Bowdoin College Longfellow remained as Professor 
of Modern Languages and Literature until 1835, when he accepted a similar posi¬ 
tion in Harvard University, which he continued to occupy until 1854, when he 



THE WAYSIDE INN. 

Scene of Longfellow’s Famous "Tales of the Wayside Inn.” 


resigned, devoting the remainder of his life to literary work and to the enjoyment 
of the association of such friends as Charles Sumner the statesman, Hawthorne the 
romancer, Louis Agassiz the great naturalist, and James Russell Lowell, the brother 
poet who succeeded to the chair of Longfellow in Harvard University on the latter’s 
resignation. 

The home of Longfellow was not only a delightful place to visit on account of 
the cordial welcome extended by the companionable poet, but for its historic asso¬ 
ciations as well; for it was none other than the old “ Cragie House” which had 
been Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War, the past tradition 
and recent hospitality of which have been well told by G. W. Curtis in his “ Homes 
of American Authors.” It was here that Longfellow surrounded himself with a 



















60 


HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


magnificent library, and within these walls he composed all of his famous produc¬ 
tions from 1839 until his death, which occurred there in 1882 at the age of seventy- 
five. The poet was twice married and was one of the most domestic of men. His 
first wife died suddenly in Europe during their sojourn in that country while Long¬ 
fellow was pursuing his post graduate course of study before taking the chair in Bow- 
doin College. In 1843 he married Miss Frances Appleton, whom he had met in 
Europe and who figures in the pages of his romance “Hyperion.” In 1861 she met 
a most tragic death by stepping on a match which set fire to her clothing, causing 
injuries from which she died. She was buried on the 19th anniversary of their mar¬ 
riage. By Longfellow’s own direction she was crowned with a wreath of orange 
blossoms commemorative of the day. The poet was so stricken with grief that for 
a year afterwards he did practically no work, and it is said neither in conversation 
nor in writing to his most intimate friends could he bear to refer to the sad event. 

Longfellow was one of the most bookish men in our literature. His knowledge 
of others’ thoughts and writings was so great that he became, instead of a creator m 
his poems, a painter of things already created. It is said that he never even owned 
a style of his own like Bryant and Poe, but assimilated what he saw or heard or 
read from books, reclothing it and sending it out again. This does not intimate 
that he was a plagiarist, but that he wrote out of the accumulated knowledge of 
others. “Evangeline,” for instance, was given him by Hawtliofne, who had heard 
of the young people of Acadia and kept them in mind, intending to weave them into 
a romance. The forcible deportation of 18,000 French people touched Hawthorne 
as it perhaps never could have touched Longfellow except in literature, and also as 
it certainly never would have touched the world had not Longfellow woven the 
woof of the story in the threads of his song. 

“Evangeline” was brought out the same year with Tennyson’s “Princess” (1847), 
and divided honors with the latter even in England. In this poem, and in “The 
Courtship of Miles Standish” and other poems, the pictures of the new world are 
brought out with charming simplicity. Though Longfellow never visited Acadia 
or Louisiana, it is the real French village of Grand Pre and the real Louisiana, not 
a poetic dream that are described in this poem. So vivid were his descriptions that 
artists in Europe painted the scenes true to nature and vied with each other in paint¬ 
ing the portrait of Evangeline, among several of which there is said to be so striking 
a resemblance as to suggest the idea that one had served as a copy for the others. 
The poem took such a hold upon the public, that both the poor man and the rich 
knew Longfellow as they knew not Tennyson their own poet. It was doubtless be¬ 
cause he, though one of the most scholarly of men, always spoke so the plainest 
reader could understand. 

In “The Tales of a Wayside Inn” (1863), the characters were not fictions, but 
real persons. The musician was none other than the famous violinist, Ole Bull; 
Professor Luigi Monte, a close friend who dined every Sunday with Longfellow, was 
the Sicilian; Dr. Henry Wales was the youth; the poet was Thomas W. Parsons, 
and the theologian was his brother, Bev. S. W. Longfellow. This poem shows 
Longfellow at his best as a story teller, while the stories which are put into the 
mouth of these actual characters perhaps could have been written by no other liv¬ 
ing man, for they are from the literature of all countries, with which Longfellow was 
so familiar. 


HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


61 


Thus, both “The Tales of a Wayside Inn” and “Evangeline”—as many other of 
Longfellow’s poems—may be called compilations or rewritten stories, rather than 
creations, and it was these characteristics of his writings which Poe and Margaret 
Fuller, and others, who considered the realm of poetry to belong purely to the 
imagination rather than the real world, so bitterly criticised. While they did not 
deny to Longfellow a poetic genius, they thought he was prostituting it by forcing 
it to drudge in the province of prosaic subjects; and for this reason Poe predicted 
that lie would not live in literature. 

It was but natural that Longfellow should write as he did. For thirty-five years 
he was an instructor in institutions of learning, and as such believed that poetry 
should be a thing of use as well as beauty. He could not agree with Poe that 
poetry was like music, only a pleasurable art. He had the triple object of stimu¬ 
lating to research and study, of impressing the mind with history or moral truths, 
and at the same time to touch and warm the heart of humanity. In all three direc¬ 
tions he succeeded to such an extent that he has probably been read by more people 
than any other poet except the sacred Psalmist; and despite the predictions of liis 
distinguished critics to the contrary, such poems as “The Psalm of Life,” (which 
Chas. Sumner allowed, to his knowledge, had saved one man from suicide), “The 
Children’s Hour,” and many others touching the every day experiences of the 
multitude, will find a glad echo in the souls of humanity as long as men shall read. 


-+&*- 


THE PSALM OF LIFE. 


WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST. 


This poem has gained wide celebrity as one of Mr. Longfellow’s most popular pieces, as has also the 
poem “Excelsior,” (hereafter quoted). They strike a popular chord and do some clever preaching and it 
is in this their chief merit consists. They are by no means among the author’s best poetic productions from 
a critical standpoint. Both these poems were written in early life. 



ELL me not, in mournful numbers, 

Life is but an empty dream! 

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
And things are not what they seem. 


Life is real! Life is earnest! 

And the grave is not its goal; 
Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
Was not spoken of the soul. 
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
Is our destined end or way; 
But to act, that each to-morrow 
Find us farther than to-day. 


Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 

And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
Funeral marches to the grave. 

In the world’s broad field of battle, 

In the bivouac of Life, 


Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 

Be a hero in the strife! 

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! 

Let the dead Past bury its dead ! 
Act,—act in the living Present! 
Heart within, and God o'erhead! 

Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime, 
And, departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, 

A forlorn and shipwreck’d brother, 
Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us, then, be up and doing, 

With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving, still pursuing, 

Learn to labor and to wait. 









HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


THE VILLAGE 

NDER a spreading chestnut tree 
The village smithy stands ; 

The smith, a mighty man is he, 

With large and sinewy hands; 

And the muscles of his brawny arms 
Are strong as iron bands. 

His hair is crisp, and black, and long; 

His face is like the tan ; 

His brow is wet w 7 ith honest sw 7 eat ; 



BLACKSMITH. 

He earns whate’er he can, 

And looks the whole world in the face, 

For he owes not any man. 

Week in, week out, from morn till night, 
You can hear his bellows blow; 

You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, 
With measured beat and slow. 

Like a sexton ringing the village bell 
When the evening sun is low 7 . 



They love to see the flaming forge, 
And hear the bellows roar, 

And catch the burning sparks that fly 
Like chaff from the threshing floor. 


And children coming home from school 
Look in at the open door; 

They love to see the flaming forge, 

And hear the bellows roar, 

And catch the burning sparks that fly 
Like chaff from a threshino;-floor. 

He goes on Sunday to the church, 

And sits among his boys ; 

He hears the parson pray and preach, 
He hears his daughter’s voice, 
Singing in the village choir, 

And it makes his heart rejoice. 


It sounds to him like her mother’s voice, 
Singing in Paradise! 

He needs must think of her once more, 
How in the grave she lies; 

And with his hard, rough hand he wipes 
A tear out of his eyes. 

T oiling—rej oicin g—sorrowing— 

Onward through life he goes: 

Each morning sees some task begin, 

Each evening sees it close ; 




































HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


63 


Something attempted—something done, 
Has earned a night’s repose. 

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend 
For the lesson thou hast taught! 


Thus at the flaming forge of Life 
Our fortunes must be wrought, 
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
Each burning deed and thought. 




THE BRIDGE. 


A favorite liaunt of Longfellow’s was the bridge between Boston and Cambridge, over which he had to 
pass, almost daily. “ I always stop on the bridge,” he writes in his journal. “Tide waters are beautiful,” and 
again, “ We leaned for a while on the wooden rails and enjoyed the silvery reflections of the sea, making 
sundry comparisons.” Among other thoughts, we have these cheering ones, that “The old sea was flash¬ 
ing with its heavenly light, though we saw it only in a single track ; the dark waves are dark provinces of 
God ; illuminous though not to us.” 

The following poem was the result of one of Longfellow’s reflections, while standing on this bridge at 
midnight. 


stood on the bridge at midnight, 

As the clocks were striking the hour, 
And the moon rose o’er the city, 
Behind the dark church tower; 

And like the waters rushing 
Among the wooden piers, 

A flood of thought came o'er me, 

That filled my eyes with tears. 

How often, 0 how often, 

In the days that had gone by, 

I had stood on that bridge at midnight, 

And gazed on that wave and sky! 

How often, O how often, 

I had wished that the ebbing tide 

Would bear me away on its bosom 
O'er the ocean wild and wide! 

For my heart was hot and restless, 

And my life was full of care, 

And the burden laid upon me, 

Seemed greater than I could bear. 

But now it has fallen from me, 

It is buried in the sea; 



And only the sorrow of others 
Throws its shadow over me. 

Yet whenever I cross the river 
On its bridge with wooden piers, 
Like the odor of brine from the ocean 
Comes the thought of other years. 

And I think how many thousands 
Of care-encumbered men, , 

Each having his burden of sorrow, 
Have crossed the bridge since then. 


I see the long procession 
Still passing to and fro, 

The young heart hot and restless, 
And the old, subdued and slow ! 

And forever and forever, 

As long as the river flows, 

As long as the heart has passions, 
As long as life has woes; 

The moon and its broken reflection 
And its shadows shall appear, 

As the symbol of love in heaven, 
And its wavering image here. 


-♦<>« 


RESIGNATION. 


HERE is no flock, however watched and 
tended, 

But one dead lamb is there! 

There is no fireside, howsoe’r defended, 
But has one vacant chair ! 

The air is full of farewells to the dying 
And mournings for the dead ; 

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 

Will not be comforted ! 


Let us be patient! These severe afflictions 
Not from the ground arise, 

But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
Assume this dark disguise. 

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; 

Amid these earthly damps 
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers 
May be heaven’s distant lamps. 





















64 


HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


There is no Death ! What seems so is transition : 
This life of mortal breath 

Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 

Whose portal we call Death. 

She is not dead,—the child of our affection,— 
But "one unto that school 

O 

Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 
And Christ himself doth rule. 

In that great cloister’s stillnes and seclusion, 

By guardian angels led, 

Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution, 
She lives whom we call dead. 

Day after day we think what she is doing 
In those bright realms of air ; 

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, 
Behold her grown more fair. 

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken 
The bond which nature gives, 


GOD'S 

like that ancient Saxon phrase which calls 
The burial-ground God’s acre ! It is just; 

It consecrates each grave within its walls, 
And breathes a benison o’er the sleeping 
dust. 

God’s Acre ! Yes, that blessed name imparts 
Comfort to those who in the grave have sown 
The seed that they had garnered in their hearts, 
Their bread of life, alas! no more their own. 

Into its furrows shall we all be cast, 

In the sure faith that we shall rise again 



Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, 
May reach her where she lives. 

Not as a child shall we again behold her; 

For when with raptures wild 

In our embraces we again enfold her, 

She will not be a child: 

But a fair maiden, in her Father’s mansion, 

Clothed with celestial grace; 

And beautiful with all the soul’s expansion 
Shall we behold her face. 

And though, at times, impetuous with emotion 
And anguish long suppressed, 

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean. 
That cannot be at rest,— 

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling 
We may not wholly stay; 

By silence sanctifying, not concealing 
The grief that must have way. 


O*- 


ACRE. 

At the great harvest, when the archangel’s blast 
Shall winnow, like a fan the chaff and grain. 

Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom, 

In the fair gardens of that second birth ; 

And each bright blossom mingle its perfume 

With that of flowers which never bloomed on earth. 

With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod, 
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow; 

This is the field and Acre of our God ! 

This is the place where human harvests grow ! 


-♦<>•- 

EXCELSIOR. 


IIE shades of night were falling fast, 

As through an Alpine village passed 
A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice, 
A banner with the strange device, 
Excelsior! 

His brow was sad ; his eye beneath, 

Flashed like a falchion from its sheath, 
And like a silver clarion rung 
The accents of that unknown tongue, 
Excelsior ! 

In happy homes he saw the light 
Of household fires gleam warm and bright; 


Above, the spectral glaciers shone, 

And from his lips escaped a groan, 
Excelsior ! 

“ Try not to Pass !” the old man said ; 

“ Dark lowers the tempest overhead, 
The roaring torrent is deep and wide !” 
And loud that clarion voice replied, 
Excelsior! 

“ 0, stay,” the maiden said, “ and rest 
Thy weary head upon this breast!” 

A tear stood in his bright blue eye, 
But still he answered, with a sigh. 
Excelsior ! 



















HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


65 


“ Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch ! 
Beware the awful avalanche !” 

This was the peasant’s last Good-night; 

A voice replied, far up the height, 
Excelsior! 

At break of day, as heavenward 
The pious monks of Saint Bernard 
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, 

A voice cried through the startled air, 
Excelsior! 


A traveler, by the faithful hound, 
Half-buried in the snow was found, 
Still grasping in his hand of ice 
That banner with the strange device, 
Excelsior ! 

There, in the twilight cold and gray, 
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, 

And from the sky, serene and far, 

A voice fell, like a falling star, 
Excelsior! 


■♦O*- 


THE BAINY HAY. 


E day is cold, and dark and dreary; 

It rains, and the wind is never weary; 
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, 
But at every gust the dead leaves fall, 

And the day is dark and dreary. 

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; 

It rains, and the wind is never weary; 

My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, 



But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, 
And the days are dark and dreary. 

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; 
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; 
Thy fate is the common fate of all, 

Into each life some rain must fall, 

Some days must be dark dreary. 


K>#- 


THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 


The writing of the following poem, “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” was occasioned by the new r s of a 
ship-wreck on the coast near Gloucester, and by the name of a reef—“Norman’s Woe”—where many 
disasters occurred. It was written one night between twelve and three o’clock, and cost the poet, it is 
said, hardly an effort. 



T was the schooner Hesperus 
That sailed the wintry sea ; 

And the skipper had taken his 
daughter, 

To bear him company. 


little 


Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax, 

Her cheeks like the dawn of day, 

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds 
That ope in the month of May. 

The skipper he stood beside the helm, 

His pipe was in his mouth, 

And watched how the veering flaw did blow 
The smoke now west, now south. 

Then up and spake an old sailor, 

Had sailed the Spanish main: 

“ I pray thee put into yonder port, 

For I fear a hurricane. 

u Last night the moon had a golden ring, 
And to-night no moon we see !” 

The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, 
And a scornful laugh laughed he. 

5 


Colder and colder blew the wind, 

A gale from the north-east; 

The snow fell hissing in the brine, 

And the billows frothed like yeast. 

Down came the storm and smote amain 
The vessel in its strength ; 

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, 
Then leaped her cable’s length. 

“ Come hither ! come hither ! my little daughter, 
And do not tremble so, 

For I can weather the roughest gale 
That ever wind did blow.” 

He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat, 
Against the stinging blast; 

He cut a rope from a broken spar, 

And bound her to the mast. 


“ Oh father ! I hear the church-bells ring, 
Oh say what may it be? ” 

“ ’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast 
And he steered for the open sea. 






















66 


HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


“ Oil father! I hear the sound of guns, 

Oh, say, what may it be ? ” 

“ Some ship in distress, that cannot live 
In such an angry sea.” 

“ Oh, father ! I see a gleaming light, 

Oh, say, what may it be ? 

But the father answered never a word— 

A frozen corpse was he. 

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, 

With his face to the skies, 

The lantern gleamed, through the gleaming snow, 
On his fixed and glassy eyes. 

Then the maiden clasped her hands, and prayed 
That saved she might be ; 

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves 
On the lake of Galilee. 

And fast through the midnight dark and drear, 
Through the whistling sleet and snow, 

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept, 

Towards the reef of Norman’s Woe. 

And ever, the fitful gusts between, 

A sound came from the land ; 

It was the sound of the trampling surf 
On the rocks and hard sea-sand. 


The breakers were right beneath her bows, 
She drifted a dreary wreck, 

And a whooping billow swept the crew 
Like icicles from her deck. 

She struck where the white and fleecy waves 
Looked soft as carded wool, 

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side 
Like the horns of an angry bull. 

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, 

With the masts, went by the board; 

Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank— 
Ho ! ho ! the breakers roared. 

At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach, 

A fisherman stood aghast, 

To see the form of a maiden fair 
Lashed close to a drifting mast. 

The salt sea was frozen on her breast, 

The salt tears in her eyes; 

And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed, 
On the billows fall and rise. 

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, 

In the midnight and the snow; 

Christ save us all from a death like this, 

| On the reef of Norman's Woe. 


-K>«- 

THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 


OMEWHAT back from the village street 
Stands the old-fashioned country seat; 
Across its antique portico 
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw; 
And, from its station in the hall, 

An ancient timepiece says to all, 

“ Forever—never ! 

Never—forever ” 

Half-way up the stairs it stands, 

And points and beckons with its hands v 
From its case of massive oak, 

Like a monk who, under his cloak, 

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas ! 

With sorrowful voice to all who pass, 

“ Forever—never ! 

Never—forever!” 

By day its voice is low and light; 

But in the silent dead of night, 

Distinct as a passing footstep's fall, 

It echoes along the vacant hall, 

Along the ceiling, along the floor, 

And seems to say at each chamber door, 

“ Forever—never! 

Never—forever !” 


Through days of sorrow and of mirth, 

Through days of death and days of birth, 
Through every swift vicissitude 
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 

And as if, like God, it all things saw, 

It calmly repeats those words of awe, 

“ Forever—never ! 

Never—forever!” 

In that mansion used to be 
Free-hearted Hospitality ; 

His great fires up the chimney roared; 

The stranger feasted at his board ; 

But, like the skeleton at the feast, 

That warning timepiece never ceased 
“ Forever—never ! 

Never—forever!” 

There groups of merry children played; 

There youths and maidens dreaming strayed 
Oh, precious hours! oh, golden prime 
And affluence of love and time ! 

Even as a miser counts his gold, 

Those hours the ancient timepiece told,— 

“ Forever—never ! 

Never—forever!” 














HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


67 


From that chamber, clothed in white, 

The bride came forth on her wedding night; 
There, in that silent room below, 

The dead lay, in his shroud of snow; 

And, in the hush that followed the prayer, 

Was heard the old clock on the stair,— 

“ Forever—never ! 

Never—forever!” 

All are scattered now, and fled,— 

Some are married, some are dead : 

And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 

“ Ah !” when shall they all meet again ? 


As in the days long since gone by, 

The ancient timepiece makes reply, 

“ Forever—never ! 

Never—forever !” 

Never here, forever there, 

Where all parting, pain, and care 
And death, and time shall disappear,— 
Forever there, but never here ! 

The horologe of Eternity 
Sayeth this incessantly, 

“ Forever—never ! 

Never—forever!” 


-♦O* 


THE SKELETON IN ARMOR. 


The writing of this famous ballad was suggested to Mr. Longfellow by the digging up of a mail-clad 
skeleton at Fall-River, Massachusetts—a circumstance which the poet linked with the traditions about the 
Round Tower at Newport, thus giving to it the spirit of a Norse Viking song of war and of the sea. It is 
written in the swift leaping meter employed by Drayton in his “Ode to the Cambro Britons on their 
Harp.” 



PEAK ! speak ! thou fearful guest! 
Who, with thy hollow breast 
Still in rude armor drest, 

Comest to daunt me ! 

Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 

But with thy fleshless palms 
Stretch’d, as if asking alms, 

Why dost thou haunt me ? ” 


“ Oft to his frozen lair 
Track’d I the grizzly bear. 
While from my path the hare 
Fled like a shadow ; 

Oft through the forest dark 

O 

Followed the were-wolf’s bark, 
Until the soaring lark 
Sang from the meadow. 


Then, from those cavernous eyes 
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 

As when the Northern skies 
Gleam in December ; 

And, like the water’s flow 
Under December’s snow, 

Came a dull voice of woe 
From the heart’s chamber. 


11 But when I older grew, 
Joining a corsair’s crew, 
O’er the dark sea I flew 
With the marauders. 
Wild was the life we led; 
Many the souls that sped, 
Many the hearts that bled, 
By our stern orders. 


“ I was a Viking old ! 

My deeds, though manifold, 

No Skald in song has told, 

No Saga taught thee! 

Take heed, that in thy verse 
Thou dost the tale rehearse, 

Else dread a dead man’s ctirse! 
For this I sought thee. 

“ Far in the Northern Land, 

By the wild Baltic’s strand, 

I, with my childish hand, 

Tamed the ger-falcon ; 

And, with my skates fast-bound, 
Skimm’d the half-frozen Sound, 
That the poor whimpering hound 
Trembled to walk on. 


“ Many a wassail-bout 
Wore the long winter out; 
Often our midnight shout 
Set the cocks crowing, 

As we the Berserk’s tale 
Measured in cups of ale, 
Draining the oaken pail, 
Fill’d to o’erflowing. 

“ Once as I told in glee 
Tales of the stormy sea, 

Soft eyes did gaze on me, 
Burning out tender; 

And as the white stars shine 
On the dark Norway pine, 
On that dark heart of mine 
Fell their soft splendor. 









68 


HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


1 1 woo’d the blue-eyed maid, 
Yielding, yet half afraid, 

And in the forest’s shade 
Our vows were plighted. 

Under its loosen’d vest 
Flutter’d her little breast, 

Like birds within their nest 
By the hawk frighted. 

‘ Bright in her father’s hall 
Shields gleam’d upon the wall, 

Loud sang the minstrels all, 
Chanting his glory; 

When of old Hildebrand 
I ask’d his daughter’s hand, 

Mute did the minstrel stand 
To hear my story. 

“ While the brown ale he quaff’d 
Loud then the champion laugh’d, 
And as the wind-gusts waft 
The sea-foam brightly, 

So the loud laugh of scorn, 

Out of those lips unshorn, 

From the deep drinking-horn 
Blew the foam lightly. 

“ She was a Prince’s child, 

I but a Viking wild, 

And though she blush’d and smiled, 
I was discarded ! 

Should not the dove so white 
Follow the sea-mew’s flight, 

Why did they leave that night 
Her nest unguarded ? 

11 Scarce had I put to sea, 

Bearing the maid with me,— 
Fairest of all was she 

Among the Norsemen !— 

When on the white sea-strand, 
Waving his armed hand, 

Saw we old Hildebrand, 

With twenty horsemen. 

“ Then launch’d they to the blast, 
Bent like a reed each mast, 

Yet we were gaining fast, 

When the wind fail’d us ; 

And with a sudden flaw 
Came round the gusty Skaw, 

So that our foe we saw 
Laugh as he hail’d us. 


‘ And as to catch the gale 
Bound veer’d the flapping sail, 
Death ! was the helmsman’s hail, 
Death without quarter! 
Mid-ships with iron keel 
Struck we her ribs of steel; 

Down her black hulk did reel 
Through the black water. 

u As with his wings aslant, 

Sails the fierce cormorant, 

Seeking some rocky haunt, 

With his prey laden, 

So toward the open main, 

Beating to sea again, 

Through the wild hurricane, 

Bore I the maiden. 

“ Three weeks we westward bore, 
And when the storm was o’er, 
Cloud-like we saw the shore 
Stretching to lee-ward; 

There for my lady’s bower 
Built I the lofty tower, 

Which, to this very hour, 

Stands looking sea-ward. 

u There lived we many years ; 

Time dried the maiden’s tears; 

She had forgot her fears, 

She was a mother ; 

Death closed her mild blue eyes, 
Under that tower she lies : 

Ne’er shall the sun arise 
On such another! 

“ Still grew my bosom then, 

Still as a stagnant fen ! 

Hateful to me were men, 

The sun light hateful! 

In the vast forest here, 

Clad in my warlike gear, 

Fell I upon my spear, 

0, death was grateful! 

# 

“ Thus, seam’d with many scars 
Bursting these prison bars, 

Up to its native stars 
My soul ascended ! 

There from the flowing bowl 
Deep drinks the warrior’s soul, 
Skal! to the Northland ! skal! ”* 
—Thus the tale ended. 


*Skal! is the Swedish expression for “ Your Health.” 





HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


69 


KING WITLAFS DRINKING-HORN. 


1TLAF, a king of the Saxons, 

VjSJ Ere yet his last he breathed, 

To the merry monks of Croyland 
His drinking-horn bequeathed,— 

That, whenever they sat at their revels, 
And drank from the golden bowl, 

They might remember the donor, 

And breathe a prayer for his soul. 

So sat they once at Christmas, 

And bade the goblet pass ; 

In their beards the red wine glistened 
Like dew-drops in the grass. 

They drank to the soul of Witlaf, 

They drank to Christ the Lord, 

And to each of the Twelve Apostles, 

Who had preached his holy word. 

They drank to the Saints and Martyrs 
Of the dismal days of yore, 

And as soon as the horn was empty 
They remembered one Saint more. 


And the reader droned from the pulpit, 
Like the murmur of many bees, 

The legend of good Saint Guthlac 
And Saint Basil's homilies ; 

Till the great bells of the convent, 

From their prison in the tower, 
Guthlac and Bartlioloimeus, 

Proclaimed the midnight hour. 

And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney 
And the Abbot bowed his head, 

And the flamelets flapped and flickered, 
But the Abbot was stark and dead. 

Yet still in his pallid fingers 
He clutched the golden bowl, 

In which, like a pearl dissolving, 

Had sunk and dissolved his soul. 

But not for this their revels 
The jovial monks forbore, 

For they cried, “ Fill high the goblet! 

We must drink to one Saint more !” 


-+ 0 + 


EVANGELINE ON THE PRAIRIE. 



Fell 

Like 


EAUTIFLTL was the night. Behind the 
black wall of the forest, 

Tipping its summit with silver, arose the 
moon. On the river 
here and there through the branches a tremu¬ 
lous gleam of the moonlight, 
the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened and 


devious spirit. 


Nearer and round about her, the manifold flowers of 
the garden 

Poured out their souls in odors, that were their 
prayers and confessions 

Unto the night, as it went its way, like a silent 
Carthusian. 

Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with 
shadows and night dews, 

Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the 
magical moonlight 

Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longings, 

As, through the garden gate, and beneath the shade 
of the oak-trees, 

Passed she along the path to the edge of the mea¬ 
sureless prairie. 


Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and fire-flies 


Gleaming and floating away in mingled and infinite 
numbers. 

Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the 
heavens, 

Shone on the eyes of man, who had ceased to marvel 
and worship, 

Save when a blazing comet was seen on the walls of 
that temple, 

As if a hand had appeared and written upon them, 
“ Upliarsin.” 

And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and 
the fire-flies, 

Wandered alone, and she cried, “ 0 Gabriel! 0 my 
beloved! 

Art thou so near unto me, and yet I cannot behold 
thee ? 

Art thou so near unto me, and yet thy voice does not 
reach me ? 

Ah ! how often thy feet have trod this path to the 
prairie ! 

Ah ! how often thine eyes have looked on the wood¬ 
lands around me ! 

Ah ! how often beneath this oak, returning from labor, 

Thou hast lain down to rest, and to dream of me in 
thy slumbers. 













70 


HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 


When shall these eyes behold, these arms be folded 
about thee?” 

Loud and sudden and near the note of a whippoor¬ 
will sounded 

a flute in the woods; and anon, through the 
neighboring thickets, 


Like 


Farther and farther away it floated and dropped into 
silence. 

“ Patience!” whispered the oaks from oracular cav¬ 
erns of darkness; 

And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh responded, 
“ To-morrow !” 


*<>♦- 


LITERARY FAME. 

As a specimen of Mr. Longfellow’s prose style we present the following extract from his “Hyperion 
written when the poet was comparatively a young man. 

possible future is behind them. We cannot suppose 



IME has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose 
pages he is continually recording illus¬ 
trious names. But, as often as a new 
name is written there, an old one disappears. Only 
a few stand in illuminated characters never to be 
■effaced. These are the high nobility of Nature,— 
Lords of the Public Domain of Thought. Pos¬ 
terity shall never question their titles. But 
those, whose fame lives only in the indiscreet opinion 
•of unwise men, must soon be as well forgotten as if 
they had never been. To this great oblivion must 
.most men come. It is better, therefore, that they 
should soon make up their minds to this: well know¬ 
ing that, as their bodies must ere long be resolved 
into dust again, and their graves tell no tales of them, 
so must their names likewise be utterly forgotten, and 
their most cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions 
have no longer an individual being among men; but 
be resolved and incorporated into the universe of 
thought. 

Yes, it is better that men should soon make up 
their minds to be forgotten, and look about them, or 
within them, for some higher motive, in what they 
do, than the approbation of men, which is Fame; 
namely, their duty; that they should be constantly 
and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of 
effects, and leaving their fame to take care of itself. 
Difficult must this indeed be, in our imperfection; 
impossible, perhaps, to achieve it wholly. Yet the 
resolute, the indomitable will of man can achieve 
much,—at times even this victory over himself; being 
persuaded that fame comes only when deserved, and 
then is as inevitable as .destiny, for it is destiny. 

It has become a common saying, that men of genius 
are always in advance of their age; which is true. 
There is something equally true, yet not so common ; 
namely, that, of these men of genius, the best and 
bravest are in advance not only of their own age, but 
of every age. As the German prose-poet says, every 


that a period of time will ever arrive, when the world, 
or any considerable portion of it, shall have come up 
abreast with these great minds, so as fully to compre¬ 
hend them. 

And, oh ! how majestically they walk in history! 
some like the sun, “ with all his traveling glories 
round him;” others wrapped in gloom, yet glorious 
as a night with stars. Through the else silent dark¬ 
ness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn 
footsteps. Onward they pass, like those hoary elders 
seen in the sublime vision of an earthly paradise, 
attendant angels bearing golden lights before them, 
and, above and behind, the whole air painted with 
seven listed colors, as from the trail of pencils! 

And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,— 
not all happy, in the outward circumstance of their 
lives. They were in want, and in pain, and familiar 
with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping walls of 
dungeons. Oh, I have looked with wonder upon 
those who, in sorrow and privation, and bodily dis¬ 
comfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death, 
have worked right on to the accomplishment of their 
great purposes; toiling much, enduring much, ful¬ 
filling much ;—and then, with shattered nerves, and 
sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down in the 
grave, and slept the sleep of death,—and the world 
talks of them, while they sleep ! 

It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had 
but sanctified them! As if the death-angel, in pass¬ 
ing, had touched them with the hem of his garment, 
and made them holy ! As if the hand of disease had 
been stretched out over them only to make the sign 
of the cross upon their souls ! And as in the sun’s 
eclipse we can behold the great stars shining in the 
heavens, so in this life-eclipse have these men beheld 
the lights of the great eternity, burning solemnly and 
forever! 







































































































































































































l 














































































































RALPH WALDO EMERSON AND 1IIS BROOK FARM FRIENDS 



























RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

THE LIBERATOR OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


O classify Emerson is a matter of no small difficulty. He was a 
philosopher, he was an essayist, he was a poet—all three so eminently 
that scarcely two of his friends would agree to which class he most 
belonged. Oliver Wendell Holmes asks: 

Where in the realm of thought whose air is song 
Does he the Buddha of the west belong? 

He seems a winged Franklin sweetly wise, 

Born to unlock the secret of the skies.” 

But whatever he did was done with a poetic touch. Philosophy, essay or song, it 
was all pregnant with the spirit of poetry. Whatever else he was Emerson was 
pre-eminently a poet. It was with this golden key that he unlocked the chambers of 
original thought, that liberated American letters. 

Until Emerson came, American authors had little independence. James Bussell 
Lowell declares, “We were socially and intellectually bound to English thought, 
until Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and glories of blue 
waters. He was our first optimistic writer. Before his day, Puritan theology had 
seen in man only a vile nature and considered his instincts for beauty and pleasure, 
proofs of his total depravity.” Under such conditions as these, the imagination was 
fettered and wholesome literature was impossible. As a reaction against this Puri¬ 
tan austerity came Unitarianism, which aimed to establish the dignity of man, and 
out of this came the further growth of the idealism or transcendentalism of Emer¬ 
son. It was this idea and these aspirations of the new theology that Emerson con¬ 
verted into literature. The indirect influence of his example on the writings of 
Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier and Lowell, and its direct influence on Thoreau, 
Hawthorne, Chas. A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, G. W. Curtis and others, formed the 
very foundation for the beautiful structure of our representative American literature. 

Emerson was profoundly a thinker who pondered the relation of man to God 
and to the universe. He conceived and taught the noblest ideals of virtue and a 
spiritual life. The profound study which Emerson devoted to his themes and his 
philosophic cast of mind made him a writer for scholars. He was a prophet who, 
without argument, announced truths which, by intuition, he seems to have perceived ; 
but the thought is often so shadowy that the ordinary reader fails to catch it. For 

71 





























72 


RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 


this reason he will never be like Longfellow or Whittier, a favorite with the masses. 
Let it not be understood, however, that all of Emerson’s writings are heavy or 
shadowy or difficult to understand. On the contrary, some of his poems are of a 
popular character and are easy of comprehension. For instance, “ The Hymn,” 
sung at the completion of the Concord Monument in 1836, was on every one’s lips 
at the time of the Centennial celebration, in 1876. His optimistic spirit is also beau¬ 
tifully and clearly expressed in the following stanza of his “ Voluntaries 

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man, 

When duty whispers low, “ Thou must,” 

The youth replies, “ I can.” 

These are but two instances of many that may be cited. No author is, perhaps, 
more enjoyed by those who understand him. He was a master of language. He 
never used the wrong word. His sentences are models. But he was not a logical 
or methodical writer. Every sentence stands by itself. His paragraphs might be 
arranged almost at random without essential loss to the essays. His philosophy con¬ 
sists largely in an array of golden sayings full of vital suggestions to help men 
make the best and most of themselves. He had no compact system of philosophy. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25,1803, within “A kite-string 
of the birth place of Benjamin Franklin” with whom he is frequently compared. 
The likeness, however, consists only in the fact that they were both decidedly repre¬ 
sentative Americans of a decidedly different type. Franklin was prose, Emerson 
poetry; Franklin common sense, real; Emerson imaginative, ideal. In these oppo¬ 
site respects they both were equally representative of the highest type. Both were 
hopeful, kindly and shrewd. Both equally powerful in making, training and guid¬ 
ing the American people. 

In his eighth year young Emerson was sent to a grammar school, where he 
made such rapid progress, that he was soon able to enter a higher department 
known as a Latin school. His first attempts at writing were not the dull efforts 
of a school boy; but original poems which he read with real taste and feeling. 
He completed his course and graduated from Harvard College at eighteen. It is 
said that he was dull in mathematics and not above the average in his class in 
general standing; but he was widely read in literature, which put him far in 
advance, perhaps, of any young man of his age. After graduating, lie taught school 
for five years in connection with his brother; but in 1825, gave it up for the minis¬ 
try. For a time he was pastor of a Unitarian Congregation in Boston; but his inde¬ 
pendent views were not in accordance with the doctrine of his church, therefore, he 
resigned in 1835, and retired, to Concord, where he purchased a home near the 
spot on which the first battle of the Revolution was fought in 1775, which he 
commemorated in his own verse :— 

“ There first the embattled farmers stood, 

And fired the shot heard round the world.” 

In this city, Emerson resided until the day‘of his death, which occurred in Con¬ 
cord, April 27, 1882, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 


73 


It was in Concord that the poet and essayist, as the prophet of the advanced 
thought of his age, gathered around him those leading spirits who were dissatisfied 
with the selfishness and shallowness of existing society, and, who had been led by 
him to dream of an ideal condition in which all should live as one family. Out of 
this grew the famous “ Brook Farm Community.” This was not an original idea 
of Emerson’s, however. Coleridge and Southey, of England, had thought of found¬ 
ing such a society in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River. Emerson regarded 
this community of interests as the clear teachings of Jesus Christ; and, to put into 
practical operation this idea, a farm of about two hundred acres was bought at 
Roxbury, Mass., and a stock company was formed under the title of “The Brook 
Farm Institution of Agriculture and Education.” About seventy members joined 



HOME OP RALPH WALDO EMERSON, CONCORD, MASS. 


in the enterprise. The principle of the organization was cooperative, the members 
sharino- the profits. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of romancers, Chas. A. 
Dana of the New York Tribune, Geo. W. Curtis, of Harper’s Monthly, Henry D 
Thoreau the poet naturalist, Amos Bronson Alcott, the transcendental dreamer and 
writer of strange shadowy sayings, and Margaret Fuller, the most learned woman of 
her a< r e were prominent members who removed to live on the farm. It is said tiiat 
Emerson himself, never really lived there ; but was a member and frequent visitor, 
as were other prominent scholars of the same school. The project was a failure. 
After five years of experience, some of the houses were destroyed by fire, the enter¬ 
prise given up, and the membership scattered. 















74 


RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 


But the Brook Farm served its purpose in literature by bringing together some 
of the best intellects in America, engaging them for five years in a common course 
of study, and stimulating a commerce of ideas. The breaking up of the community 
was better, perhaps, than its success would have been. It dispersed and scattered 
abroad the advanced thoughts of Emerson, and the doctrine of the society into every 
profession. Instead of being confined to the little paper, “The Dial,” (which was 
the organ of the society) its literature was transferred into a number of widely cir¬ 
culated national mediums. 

Thus, it will be seen how Emerson, the “Sage of Concord,” gathered around him 
and dominated, by his charming personality, his powerful mind, and his wholesome 
influence, some of the brightest minds that have figured in American literature; 
and how, through them, as well as his own writings, he has done so much, not only 
to lay the foundation of a new literature, but to mould and shape leading minds for 
generations to come. The Brook Farm idea was the uppermost thought in Edward 
Bellamy’s famous novel, “Looking Backward,” which created such a sensation in 
the reading world a few years since. The progressive thought of Emerson was 
father to the so-called “New Theology,” or “Higher Criticism,” of modern scholars 
and theologians. It is, perhaps, for the influence which Emerson has exerted, rather 
than his own works, that the literature of America is mostly indebted to him. It 
was 

American letters than the city of New York. 

The charm of Emerson’s personality has already been referred to,—and it is not 
strange that it should have been so great. His manhood, no less than his genius 
was worthy of admiration and of reverence. His life corresponded with his brave, 
cheerful and steadfast teachings. He “practiced what he preached.” His manners 
were so gentle, his nature so transparent, and his life so singularly pure and happy, 
that he was called, while he lived, “the good and great Emerson;” and, since his 
death, the memory of his life and manly example are among the cherished posses¬ 
sions of our literature. 

The reverence of his literary associates was little less than worship. Amos Bron¬ 
son Alcott,—father of the authoress, Louisa M. Alcott,—one of the Brook Farm 
members, though himself a profound scholar and several years Emerson’s senior, 
declared that it would have been his s;reat misfortune to have lived without knowing 
Emerson, whom he styled, “The magic minstrel and speaker! whose rhetoric, voiced 
as by organ stops, delivers the sentiment from his breast in cadences peculiar to 
himself; now hurling it forth on the ear, echoing them; then,—as his mood and 
matter invite it—dying like 

Music of mild lutes 
Or silver coated flutes. 


through his efforts that the village of Concord has been made more famous in 


. . . such is the rhapsodist’s cunning in its structure and delivery.” 

Referring to his association with Emerson, the same writer acknowledges in a 
poem, written after the sage’s death: 


Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend: 

By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescend 
To brine; me straightway into thy fair guild; 

And life-long hath it been high compliment 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 


75 


By that to have been known, and thy friend styled, 
Given to rare thought and to good learning bent; 
Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled. 

Permit me, then, thus honored, still to be 
A scholar in thy university. 


HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT, 1836. 



the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 


On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
We set to day a votive stone, 

That memory may their deed redeem 
When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 


The foe long since in silence slept; 

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 

And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 


Spirit that made those heroes dare 
To die or leave their children free, 
Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
The shaft we raise to them and thee. 


THE RHODORA. 


N May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 
Plfa g|jy I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
To please the desert and the sluggish brook ; 
The purple petals fallen in the pool 

Made the black waters with their beauty gay; 
Young Raphael might covet such a school; 

O 0.7 

The lively show beguiled me from my way. 
Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 


This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky, 

Dear tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then beauty is its own excuse for being. 

Why, thou wert there, 0, rival of the rose! 

I never thought to ask, I never knew, 

But in my simple ignorance suppose 
The selfsame Power that brought me there, brought 
you. 


THE TRUE HERO. 

AN EXTRACT FROM u VOLUNTARIES.” 


The following story is told of the manner in w r hich the poem, “Voluntaries,’’ obtained its title. In 1863, 
Mr. Emerson came to Boston and took a room in the Parker House, bringing with him the unfinished sketch 
of a few verses which he wished Mr. Fields, his publisher, to hear. He drew a small table to the centre 
of the room and read aloud the lines he proposed giving to the press. They were written on separate slips 
of paper which were flying loosely about the room. (Mr. Emerson frequently wrote in such independent 
paragraphs, that many of his poems and essays might be rearranged without doing them serious violence.) 
The question arose as to title of the verses read, when Mr. Fields suggested “ Voluntnires,” which was cor 
dially accepted by Mr. Emerson. 


WELL for the fortunate soul 
Which Music’s wings unfold, 
Stealing away the memory 
Of sorrows new and old ! 

Yet happier he whose inward sight, 
Stayed on his subtle thought, 

Shuts his sense on toys of time, 

To vacant bosoms brought; 

But best befriended of the God 
He who, in evil times, 

Warned by an inward voice, 


Heeds not the darkness and the dread, 
Biding by his rule and choice, 

Telling only the fiery thread, 

Leading over heroic ground 
Walled with immortal terror round, 

To the aim which him allures, 

And the sweet heaven his deed secures. 
Peril around all else appalling, 

Cannon in front and leaden rain, 

Him duty through the clarion calling 
To the van called not in vain. 























76 


RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 


Stainless soldier on the walls, 

Knowing this,—and knows no more,— 
Whoever tights, whoever falls, 

Justice conquers evermore, 

Justice after as before ;— 

And he who battles on her side, 

God, though he were ten times slain, 
Crowns him victor glorified, 

Victor over death and pain 


Forever : but his erring foe, 
Self-assured that he prevails, 

Looks from his victim lying low, 
And sees aloft the red right arm 
Redress the eternal scales. 

He, the poor for whom angels foil, 
Blind with pride and fooled by hate, 
Writhes within the dragon coil, 
lleserved to a speechless-fate. 


-♦<>« 


MOUNTAIN AND SQUIRBEL. 


HE mountain and the squirrel 
Had a quarrel; 

And the former called the latter “ Little 


Bun replied: 

“You are doubtless very big; 

But all sorts of things and weather 
Must be taken in together, 

To make up a year 
And a sphere. 



And I think it no disgrace 
To occupy my place. 

If I’m not so large as you, 

You are not so small as I, 

And not half so spry. 

I’ll not deny you make 
A very pretty squirrel track ; 

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; 
If I cannot carry forests on my back, 
Neither can you crack a nut.” 


THE SNOW STORM. 


NNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky 
Arrives the snow, and driving o’er the 
fields, 

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, 
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end. 

The sled and traveler stopp’d, the courier’s feet 
Delay’d, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

Come see the north-wind’s masonry. 

Out of an unseen quarry evermore 
Furnish’d with tile, the fierce artificer 
Curves his white bastions with projected roof 
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. 



Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work 
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he 
For number or proportion. Mockingly 
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;- 
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; 

Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall, 
Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gate 
A tapering turret overtops the work. 

And when his hours are number’d, and the world 
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonish’d Art 
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, 

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, 

The frolic architecture"of the snow. 




THE PROBLEM. 


LIKE a church, I like a cowl, 

I love a prophet of the soul. 

And on my heart monastic aisles 
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles, 
Yet not for all his faith can see 
Would I that cowled churchman be. 

Why should the vest on him allure, 

Which I could not on me endure ? 

Not from a vain or shallow thought 

O 

His awful Jove young Phidias brought; 

Never from lips of cunning fell 



The thrilling Delphic oracle ; 

Out from the heart of nature roll’d 
The burdens of the Bible old ; 

The litanies of nations came, 

Like the volcano’s tongue of flame, 

Up from the burning core below,— 

The canticles of love and wo. 

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, 

And groin’d the aisles of Christian Rome, 
Wrought in a sad sincerity. 

Himself from God he could not free; 





























RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 


77 


He builded better than he knew, 

The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

Know’st thou what wove yon wood-bird’s nest 
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? 

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, 

Painting with morn each annual cell? 

Or how the sacred pine tree adds 
To her old leaves new myriads ? 

Such and so grew these holy piles, 

Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon 
As the best gem upon her zone; 

And morning opes with haste her lids 
To gaze upon the Pyramids; 

O’er England's Abbeys bends the sky 
As on its friends with kindred eye; 

For, out of Thought’s interior sphere 
These wonders rose to upper air, 

And nature gladly gave them place, 

Adopted them into her race, 

And granted them an equal date 
With Andes and with Ararat. 

These temples grew as grows the grass, 

Art might obey but not surpass. 

The passive Master lent his hand 


To the vast Soul that o’er him plann’d, 

And the same power that rear’d the shrine, 
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 

Ever the fiery Pentecost 
Girds with one flame the countless host, 
Trances the heart through chanting choirs, 
And through the priest the mind inspires. 

The word unto the prophet spoken, 

Was writ on tables yet unbroken; 

The word by seers or sybils told 
In groves of oak or fanes of gold, 

Still floats upon the morning wind, 

Still whispers to the willing mind. 

One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost. 

I know what say the Fathers wise,— 

The book itself before me lies,— 

Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, 

And he who blent both in his line, 

The younger Golden Lips or mines, 

Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines; 

His words are music in my ear, 

I see his cowled portrait dear, 

And yet, for all his faith could see, 

I would not the good bishop be. 


-*o+ 


TRAVELING. 


HAVE no churlish objection to the cir¬ 
cumnavigation of the globe, for the pur¬ 
poses of art, of study, and benevolence, 
so that the man is first domesticated, or does not 
go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater 
than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or 
to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels 
away from himself, and grows old even in youth 
among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will 
and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. 
He carries ruins to ruins. 

Traveling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our 
first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At 
home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be in¬ 
toxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack 
my trunk, embrace my friends, and embark on the 
sea, and at last wake up at Naples, and there beside 
me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identi¬ 
cal that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the 
palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and 
suggestions; but I am not intoxicated. My giant 
goes with me wherever I go. 

But the rage of traveling is itself only a symptom 
of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intel¬ 


lectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and the 
universal system of education fosters restlessness. 
Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay 
at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but 
the traveling of the mind ? Our houses are built 
with foreign taste ; our shelves are garnished with 
foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our 
whole minds, lean to and follow the past and the dis¬ 
tant as the eyes of a maid follow her mistress. The 
soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. 
It was in his own mind that the artist sought his 
model. It was an application of his own thought to 
the thing to be done and the conditions to be ob- 
served. And why need we copy the Doric or the 
Gothic model ? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of 
thought and quaint expression are as near to us as to 
any, and if the American artist will study with hope 
and love the precise thing to be done by him, con¬ 
sidering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, 
the wants of the people, the habit and form of 
the government, he will create a house in which all 
these will find themselves fitted, and taste and senti¬ 
ment will be satisfied also. 











78 


RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 


THE COMPENSATION OF CALAMITY. 


E cannot part with our friends. We can¬ 
not let our angels go. We do not see 
that they only go out that archangels 
may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We 
do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper 
eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe 
there is any force in to-day to rival or recreate that 
beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of 
the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter 
and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover 
and nerve us again. We cannot find aught so dear, 
so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. 
The voice of the Almighty saith, “ Up and onward 
for evermore!” We cannot stay amid the ruins, 
neither will we rely on the new ; and so we walk ever 
with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look 
backwards. 

And yet the compensations of calamity are made 
apparent to the understanding also, after long inter¬ 
vals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disap¬ 



pointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at 
the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the 
sure years reveal the deep remedial force that under¬ 
lies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, 
brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, 
somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or 
genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our 
way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of 
youth which was waiting to be closed ; breaks up a 
wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, 
and allows the formation of new ones more friendly 
to the growth of character. It permits or constrains 
the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception 
of new influences that prove of the first importance 
to the next } r ears ; and the man or woman w T ho would 
have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room 
for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by 
the falling of the walls and the neglect of the 
gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding 
shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. 


-*<>♦■ 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


NSIST on yourself; never imitate. Your 
own gift you can present every moment 
with the cumulative force of a whole 
life’s cultivation ; but of the adopted talent of 
another you have only an extemporaneous, half 
possession. That which each can do best, none but 
his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows 
what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. 
Where is the master who could have taught Shaks- 
peare ? Where is the master who could have in¬ 



structed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon or 
Newton? Every great man is a unique. The 
Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could 
not borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the 
great man imitates in the original crisis when he per¬ 
forms a great act, I will tell him who else than him¬ 
self can teach him. Shakspeare will never be made 
by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is as¬ 
signed thee, and thou canst not hope too much or 
dare too much. 


FROM “ NATURE.” 



]0 go into solitude a man needs to retire as 
much from his chamber as from societv. 
I am not solitary whilst I read and write, 
though nobody is with me. But if a man would be 
alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come 
from those heavenly worlds will separate between 
him and vulgar things. One might think the atmos¬ 
phere was made transparent with this design, to 
give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual pres¬ 


ence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, 
how great they are ! 

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand 
years, how would men believe and adore and preserve 
for many generations the remembrance of the city of 
God which had been shown ! But every night come 
out these preachers of beauty and light the universe 
with their admonishing smile. 

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because, 



















RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 


79 , 


though always present, they are always inaccessible; 
but all natural objects make kindred impression when 
the mind is open to their influence. Nature never 
wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest 
man extort all her secrets and lose his curiosity by 
finding out all her perfection. Nature never became 
a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the 
mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour 
as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his 
childhood. 

When we speak of Nature in this manner, we have 
a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We 
mean the integrity of impression made by manifold 
Nature objects. It is this which distinguishes the 
stick of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of 
the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this 
morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or 
thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and 
Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them 
owns the landscape. There is a property in the hori¬ 
zon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate 
all the parts—that is, the poet. This is the best 
part of these men’s farms, yet to this their land-deeds 
give them no title. 

To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. 
Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have 
a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only 
the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the 
heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose 
inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to 
each other—who has retained the spirit of infancy 
even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with 
heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In 
the presence of Nature a wild delight runs through 
the man in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, He 
is my creature, and, maugre all his impertinent griefs, 
he shall be glad with me. Not the sun nor the sum¬ 
mer alone, but every hour and season, yields its tribute 
of delight; for every hour and change corresponds 
to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from 
breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a 


setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning 
piece. In good health the air is a cordial of incredi¬ 
ble virtue. Crossing a bare common in snow-puddles 
at twilight under a clouded sky, without having in 
my thoughts any occurrence of special good-fortune, 
I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear 
to think how glad I am. In the woods, too, a man 
casts off his years as the snake his slough, and at 
what period soever of his life is always a child. In 
the woods is perpetual youth. Within these planta¬ 
tions of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a peren¬ 
nial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he 
should tire of them in a thousand years. In the 
woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel 
that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no 
calamity (leaving me my eyes)—which Nature can¬ 
not repair. * * * * * * * 

The greatest delight which the fields and woods 
minister is the suggestion of an occult relation be¬ 
tween man and the vegetable. I am not alone and 
unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. 
The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me 
and old. 

It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. 
Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better 
emotion coniine; over me when I deemed I was think- 
ing justly or doing right. 

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this de¬ 
light does not reside in Nature, but in man or in a 
harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleas¬ 
ures with great temperance. For Nature is not al¬ 
ways tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene 
which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as 
for the frolic of the nymphs is overspread with mel¬ 
ancholy to-day. Nature always wears the colors of 
the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity the 
heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then there 
is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him 
who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky 
is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the 
population. 




A solitary farm house near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the valley 
of the Merrimac, on the 17th day of December, 1807, John Green- 
leaf Whittier was born. Within the same town, and Amesbury, 
nearby, this kind and gentle man, whom all the world delights to 
honor for his simple and beautiful heart-songs, spent most of his life, 
dying at the ripe old age of nearly eighty-tive, in Danvers, Massa¬ 
chusetts, September 7th, 1892. The only distinguishing features about his ancestors 
were that Tlios. Whittier settled at Haverhill in 1647, and brought with him from 
Newberry the first hive of bees in the settlement, that they were all sturdy Quakers, 
lived simply, were friendly and freedom loving. The early surroundings of the 
farmer boy were simple and frugal. He has pictured them for us in his masterpiece, 
“Snowbound.” Poverty, the necessity of laboring upon the farm, the influence of 
Quaker traditions, his busy life, all conspired against his liberal education and literary 
culture. This limitation of knowledge is, however, at once to the masses his charm, 
and, to scholars, his one defect. It has led him to write, as no other poet could, 
upon the dear simplicity of New England farm life. He has written from the heart 
and not from the head ; he has composed popular pastorals, not hymns of culture. 
Only such training as the district schools afforded, with a couple of years at Haver¬ 
hill Academy comprised his advantages in education. 

In referring to this alma mater in after years, under the spell of his muse, the 
poet thus writes :— 

“ Still sits the school house by the road, 

A ragged beggar sunning ; 

Around it still the sumachs grow 
And black-berry vines are running. 

Within, the master’s desk is seen, 

Deep-scarred by raps official; 

The warping floor, the battered seats, 

The jack-knife carved initial.” 

It was natural for Whittier to become the poet of that combination of which 
Garrison was the apostle, and Phillips and Sumner the orators. His early poems were 
published by Garrison in his paper, “ The Free Press,” the first one when Whittier 

80 



I 




























JOHN G. WHITTIER, HIS HOME AND BIRTHPLACE, 












































































































































































































































































































. 






























JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


81 


Weis nineteen yeais of age and Garrison himself little more tlian a boy. TIig farmer 
lad was elated when he found the verses which he had so timidly submitted in print 
with a friendly comment from the editor and a request for more. Garrison even 
visited Whittier’s parents and urged the importance of giving him a finished educa¬ 
tion. Thus lie fell early under the spell ot the great abolitionist and threw himself 
with all the ardor of his nature into the movement. His poems against slavery and 
disunion have a ringing zeal worthy of a Cromwell. “ They are,” declares one 
writer, “ like the sound of the trumpets blown before the walls of Jericho.” 

As a Quaker Whittier could not have been otherwise than an abolitionist, for that 
denomination had long since abolished slavery within its own communion. Most 
prominent among his poems of freedom are “The Voice of Freedom,” published in 
1849, “ The Panorama and Other Poems,” in 1856, “ In War Times,” in 1863, and 
“ Ichabod,” a pathetically kind yet severely stinging rebuke to Daniel Webster for 
his support of the Fugitive Slave Law. Webster was right from the standpoint of 
law and the Constitution, but Whittier argued from the standpoint of human right 
and liberty. “ Barbara Frietchie,”—while it is pronounced purely a fiction, as 
is also his poem about John Brown kissing the Negro baby on his way to the gal¬ 
lows,—is perhaps the most widely quoted of his famous war poems. 

Whittier also wrote extensively on subjects relating to New England history, 
witchcraft and colonial traditions. This group includes many of his best ballads, 
which have done in verse for colonial romance what Hawthorne did in prose in his 
“ Twice-Told Tales ” and “ Scarlet Letter.” It is these poems that have entitled 
Whittier to be called “ the greatest of American ballad writers.” Among them are 
to be found “ Mabel Martin,” “The Witch of Wenliam,” “Marguerite” and 
“Skipper Ireson’s Ride.” But it is perhaps in the third department of his writings, 
namely, rural tales and idyls, that the poet is most widely known. These pastoral 
poems contain the very heart and soul of New England. They are faithful and 
loving pictures of humble life, simple and peaceful in their subject and in their 
style. The masterpieces of this class are “ Snowbound,” “ Maud Muller,” “ The 
Barefoot Boy,” “Among the Hills,” “ Telling the Bees,” etc. The relation of these 
simple experiences of homely character has carried him to the hearts of the people 
and made him, next to Longfellow, the most popular of American poets. There is 
a pleasure and a satisfaction in the freshness of Whittier’s homely words and home- 
spun j^hrases, which we seek in vain in the polished art of cultivated masters. As 
a poet of nature he has painted the landscapes of New England as Bryant has the 
larger features of the continent. 

Whittier was never married and aside from a few exquisite verses he has given 
the public no clew to the romance of his youth. His home was presided over for 
many years by his sister Elizabeth, a most lovely and talented woman, for whom he 
cherished the deepest affection, and he has written nothing more touching than his 
tribute to her memory in “ Snowbound.” The poet was shy and diffident among 
strangers and in formal society, but among his friends genial and delightful, with a 
fund of gentle and delicate humor which gave his conversation a great charm. 

Aside from his work as a poet Whittier wrote considerable prose. His first volume 
was “ Legends of New England,” published in 1831, consisting of prose and verse. 
Subsequent prose publications consisted of contributions to the slave controversy, 
6 



82 


JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


biographical sketches of English and American reformers, studies of scenery and 
folk-lore of the Merrimac valley. Those of greatest literary interest were the 
“ Supernaturalisms of New England,” (1847,) and “ Literary Recreations and 
Miscellanies,” (1852.) 

In 1836 Whittier became secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and 
he was all his life interested in public affairs, and wrote much for newspapers and 
periodicals. In 1838 he began to edit the “ Pennsylvania Freeman ” in Philadel¬ 
phia, but in the following year his press was destroyed and his office burned by a 
pro-slavery mob, and he returned to New England, devoting the larger part of his 
life, aside from his anti-slavery political writings, to embalming its history and 
legends in his literature, and so completely has it been done by him it has been 
declared : “ If every other record of the early history and life of New England 
were lost the story could be constructed again from the pages of Whittier. Traits, 
habits, facts, traditions, incidents—he holds a torch to the dark places and illumines 
them every one.” 

Mr. Whittier, perhaps, is the most peculiarly American poet of any that our country 
has produced. The woods and waterfowl of Bryant belong as much to one land 
as another; and all the rest of our singers—Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and their 
brethren—with the single exception of Joaquin Miller, might as well have been born 
in the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Byron as their own. But Whittier is 
entirely a poet of his own soil. All through his verse we see the elements that 
created it, and it is interesting to trace his simple life, throughout, in his verses from 
the time, when like that urchin with whom he asserts brotherhood, and who has won 
all affections, he ate his 

* * * “ milk and bread, 

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 

On the door-stone gray and rude. 

O’er me, like a regal tent, 

Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 

Purple curtains fringed with gold 
Looped in many a wind-swung fold 

and, when a little older his fancy dwelt upon the adventures of Chalkley—as 

“ Following my plough by Merrimac’s green shore 
His simple record I have pondered o’er 
With deep and quiet joy.” 

In these reveries, “ The Barefoot Boy ” and others, thousands of his countrymen 
have lived over their lives again. Every thing he wrote, to the New Englander has 
a sweet, warm familiar life about it. To them his writings are familiar photo¬ 
graphs, but they are also treasury houses of facts over which the future antiquarian 
will pour and gather all the close details of the phase of civilization that they give. 

The old Whittier homestead at Amesbury is now in charge of Mrs. Pickard, a 
neice of the poet. She has recently made certain changes in the house; but this 
has been done so wisely and cautiously that if the place some day becomes a shrine 
—as it doubtless will—the restoration of the old estate will be a simple matter. The 
library is left quite undisturbed, just as it was when Whittier died. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


83 


MY PLAYMATE. 


The blossoms drifted at our feet, 

The orchard birds sang clear; 

The sweetest and the saddest day 
It seemed of all the year, 

For more to me than birds or flowers, 
My playmate left her home, 

And took with her the laughing spring, 
The music and the bloom. 

She kissed the lips of kith and kin, 

She laid her hand in mine: 

What more could ask the bashful boy 
Who fed her father’s kine ? 

She left us in the bloom of May: 

The constant years told o’er 

The seasons with as sweet May morns, 
But she came back no more. 

I walk with noiseless feet the round 
Of uneventful years; 

Still o’er and o’er I sow the Spring 
And reap the Autumn ears. 

She lives where all the golden year 
Her summer roses blow ; 

The dusky children of the sun 
Before her come and go. 

There haply with her jeweled hands 
She smooths her silken gown,— 

No more the homespun lap wherein 
I shook the walnuts down. 


The wild grapes wait us by the brook, 

The brown nuts on the hill, 

And still the May-day flowers make sweet 
The woods of Follymill. 

The lilies blossom in the pond, 

The birds build in the tree, 

The dark pines sing on Ramoth Hill 
The slow song of the sea. 

I wonder if she thinks of them, 

And how the old time seems,— 

If ever the pines of Ramoth wood 
Are sounding in her dreams. 

I see her face, I hear her voice; 

Does she remember mine ? 

And what to her is now the boy 
Who fed her father’s kine ? 

What cares she that the orioles build 
For other eyes than ours,— 

That other hands with nuts are filled, 

And other laps with flowers ? 

0 playmate in the golden time! 

Our mossy seat is green, 

Its fringing violets blossom yet, 

The old trees o’er it lean. 

The winds so sweet with birch and fern 
• A sweeter memory blow ; 

And there in spring the veeries sing 
The song of long ago. 

And still the pines of Ramoth wood 
Are moaning like the sea,— 

The moaning of the sea of change 
Between myself and thee ! 



HE pines were dark on Ramoth Hill, 
Their song was soft and low; 

The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
Were falling like the snow. 




THE CHANGELING. 



OR the fairest maid in Hampton 
They needed not to search, 
Who saw young Anna Favor 
Come walking into church.— 


Now the weariest of all mothers, 

The saddest two-years bride, 

She scowls in the face of her husband, 
And spurns her child aside. 


Or bringing from the meadows, 
At set of harvest-day, 

The frolic of the blackbirds, 
The sweetness of the hay. 


u Rake out the red coals, goodman, 

For there the child shall lie, 

Till the black witch comes to fetch her, 
And both up chimney fly. 














84 


JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


\ 


“ It’s never my own little daughter, 

It’s never my own,” she said; 

“ The witches have stolen my Anna, 

And left me an imp instead. 

“ 0, fair and sweet was my baby, 

Blue eyes, and ringlets of gold ; 

But this is ugly and wrinkled, 

Cross, and cunning, and old. 

“ I hate the touch of her fingers, 

I hate the feel of her skin ; 

It’s not the milk from my bosom, 

But my blood, that she sucks in. 

“ My face grows sharp with the torment; 
Look ! my arms are skin and bone !— 

Rake open the red coals, goodman, 

And the witch shall have her own. 

“ She’ll come when she hears it crying, 

In the shape of an owl or bat, 

And she'll bring us our darling Anna 
In place of her screeching brat.” 

Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton, 

Laid his hand upon her head : 

“ Thy sorrow is great, 0 woman ! 

I sorrow with thee,” he said. 

“ The paths to trouble are many, 

And never but one sure way 

Leads out to the light beyond it: 

My poor wife, let us pray.” 

Then he said to the great All-Father, 
“Thy daughter is weak and blind ; 

Let her sight come back, and clothe her 
Once more in her right mind. 

“Lead her out of this evil shadow, 

Out of these fancies wild ; 

Let the holy love of the mother, 

Turn again to her child. 

“ Make her lips like the lips of Mary, 
Kissing her blessed Son ; 

Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus, 
Rest on her little one. 

“ Comfort the soul of thy handmaid, 

Open her prison door, 

And thine shall be all the glory 
And praise forevermore.” 


Then into the face of its mother, 

The baby looked up and smiled ; 

And the cloud of her soul was lifted, 

And she knew her little child. 

A beam of slant west sunshine 
Made the wan face almost fair, 

Lit the blue eyes’ patient wonder 
And the rings of pale gold hair. 

She kissed it on lip and forehead, 

She kissed it on cheek and chin; 

And she bared her snow-white bosom 
To the lips so pale and thin. 

0, fair on her bridal morning 

Was the maid who blushed and smiled 

But fairer to Ezra Dalton 

Looked the mother of his child. 

With more than a lover’s fondness 
He stooped to her worn young face 

And the nursing child and the mother 
He folded in one embrace. 

“ Now mount and ride, my goodman 
As lovest thine own soul ! 

Woe’s me if my wicked fancies 
Be the death of Goody Cole !” 

His horse he saddled and bridled, 

And into the night rode he,— 

Now through the great black woodland ; 
Now by the white-beached sea. 

He rode through the silent clearings, 

He came to the ferry wide. 

And thrice he called to the boatman 
Asleep on the other side. 

He set his horse to the river, 

He swam to Newburg town, 

And he called up Justice Sewall 
In his nightcap and his gown. 

And the grave and worshipful justice, 
Upon whose soul be peace ! 

Set his name to the jailer’s warrant 
For Goody Cole’s release. 

Then through the night the hoof-beats 
Went sounding like a flail: 

And Goody Cole at cock crow 
Came forth from Ipswich jail. 





JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


85 


THE WORSHIP OF NATURE. 



HE ocean looketh up to lieaven, 

As ’twere a living thing; 

The homage of its waves is given 
In ceaseless worshiping. 


They kneel upon the sloping sand, 
As bends the human knee, 

A beautiful and tireless band, 

The priesthood of the sea ! 


They pour the glittering treasures out 
Which in the deep have birth, 

And chant their awful hymns about 
The watching hills of earth. 

The green earth sends its incense up 
From every mountain-shrine, 

From every flower and dewy cup 
That greeteth the sunshine. 

The mists are lifted from the rills, 
Like the white wing of prayer ; 


They lean above the ancient hills, 

As doing homage there. 

The forest-tops are lowly cast 
O'er breezy hill and glen, 

As if a prayerful spirit pass’d 
On nature as on men. 

The clouds weep o’er the fallen World, 
E’en as repentant love; 

Ere, to the blessed breeze unfurl’d, 
They fade in light above. 

The sky is as a temple’s arch, 

The blue and wavy air 

Is glorious with the spirit-march 
Of messengers at prayer. 

The gentle moon, the kindling sun, 
The many stars are given, 

As shrines to burn earth’s incense on. 
The altar-fires of Heaven ! 




THE BAREFOOT BOY. 


LESSINGS on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! 
With thy turned up pantaloons, 
And thy merry whistled tunes; 
With thy red lip, redder still 
Kissed by strawberries on the hill; 
With the sunshine on thy face, 
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace! 
From my heart I give thee joy ; 

I was once a barefoot boy. 

Prince thou art—the grown-up man, 
Only is republican. 

Let the million-dollared ride ! 

Barefoot, trudging at his side, 

Thou hast more than he can buy, 

In the reach of ear and eye : 

Outward sunshine, inward joy, 
Blessings on the barefoot boy. 

O ! for boyhood’s painless play, 

Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
Knowledge never learned of schools: 
Of the wild bee’s morning chase, 

Of the wild flower’s time and place, 
Flight of fowl, and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood ; 

How the tortoise bears his shell, 

How the woodchuck digs his cell, 

And the ground-mole sinks his well; 
How the robin feeds her young, 



How the oriole’s nest is hung; 

Where the whitest lilies blow, 

Where the freshest berries grow, 

Where the ground-nut trails its vine, 
Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine; 

Of the black wasp’s cunning way, 

Mason of his walls of clay, 

And the architectural plans 
Of gray hornet artisans ! 

For, eschewing books and tasks, 

Nature answers all he asks; 

Hand in hand with her he walks, 

Part and parcel of her joy, 

Blessings on the barefoot boy. 

0 for boyhood’s time of June, 

Crowding years in one brief moon, 

When all things I heard or saw, 

Me, their master, waited for! 

I was rich in flowers and trees, 
Humming-birds and honey-bees; 

For my sport the squirrel played, 

Plied the snouted mole his spade; 

For my taste the blackberry cone 
Purpled over hedge and stone; 

Laughed the brook for my delight, 
Through the day, and through the night: 
Whispering at the garden wall. 

Talked with me from fall to fall ; 

Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 
Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 


















86 


JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


Mine, on bending orchard trees. 
Apples of Hesperides! 

Still, as my horizon grew, 

Larger grew my riches too, 

All the world I saw or knew 
Seemed a complex Chinese toy, 
Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 

0, for festal dainties spread, 

Like my bowl of milk and bread, 
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 

On the door-stone, gray and rude! 
O’er me like a regal tent, 

Cloudy ribbed, the sunset bent, 
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, 
Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 
While for music came the play 
Of the pied frogs’ orchestra ; 

And, to light the noisy choir, 

Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 

I was monarch ; pomp and joy 


Waited on the barefoot boy! 

Cheerily, then, my little man ! 

Live and laugh as boyhood can ; 
Though the flinty slopes be hard, 
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, 
Every morn shall lead thee through 
Fresh baptisms of the dew ; 

Every evening from thy feet 
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat; 

All too soon these feet must hide 
In the prison cells of pride, 

Lose the freedom of the sod, 

Like a colt’s for work be shod, 

Made to tread the mills of toil, 

Up and down in ceaseless moil, 

Happy if their track be found 
Never on forbidden ground ; 

Happy if they sink not in 
Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 
Ah ! that thou couldst know thy joy, 
Ere it passes, barefoot boy! 


MAUD MULLER. 



AUD MULLER, on a summer’s day, 
Raked the meadow sweet with hay. 

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth 
Of simple beauty and rustic health. 


He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, 

Of the singing birds and the humming bees; 

Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether 
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather. 


Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee 
The mock-bird echoed from his tree. 


And Maud forgot her briar-torn gown, 
And her graceful ankles bare and brown; 


But, when she glanced to the far off town, 
White from its hill-slope looking down, 

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest 
And a nameless longing tilled her breast— 

A wish, that she hardly dared to own, 

For something better than she had known. 

The Judge rode slowly down the lane, 

Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane. 

He drew his bridle in the shade 
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid. 

And ask a draught from the spring that flowed 
Through the meadow across the road. 

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, 
And filled for him her small tin cup, 

And blushed as she gave it, looking down 
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown. 

Thanks ! ” said the Judge, “ a sweeter draught 
From a fairer hand was never quaffed.” 


And listened, while a pleased surprise 
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. 

At last, like one who for delay 
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. 

Maud Muller looked and sighed : “ Ah me ! 
That I the J udge’s bride might be! 

“ He would dress me up in silks so fine, 

And praise and toast me at his wine. 

11 My father should wear a broadcloth coat; 

My brother should sail a painted boat. 

“ I’d dress my mother so grand and gay, 

And the baby should have a new toy each day. 

“ And I’d feed the hungry and clothe the poor, 
And all should bless me who left our door.” 

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, 
And saw Maud Muller standing still. 

“ A form more fair, a face more sweet, 

Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet. 











JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


“ And her modest answer and graceful air 
Show her wise and good as she is fair. 

“ Would she were mine, and I to-day, 

Like her, a harvester of hay: 

“ No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, 
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, 

“ But low of cattle, and song of birds, 

And health, and quiet, and loving words.” 

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold, 
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold. 

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, 

And Maud was left in the field alone. 

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, 

When he hummed in court an old love-tune; 

And the young girl mused beside the well, 

Till the rain on the unraked clover fell. 

He wedded a wife of richest dower, 

Who lived for fashion, as he for power. 

Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow, 

He watched a picture come and go; 

And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyes 
Looked out in their innocent surprise. 

Oft when the wine in his glass was red, 

He longed for the wayside well instead; 

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms, 
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms. 

And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain, 
“ Ah, that I were free again ! 

“ Free as when I rode that day, 

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.” 

She wedded a man unlearned and poor, 

And many children played round her door. 


But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain, 
Left their traces on heart and brain. 

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot 
On the new mown hay in the meadow lot, 

And she heard the little spring brook fall 
Over the roadside, through the wall, 

In the shade of the apple-tree again 
She saw a rider draw his rein, 

And gazing down with timid grace, 

She felt his pleased eyes read her face. 


Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls 
Stretched away into stately halls; 


The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, 
The tallow candle an astral burned; 


And for him who sat by the chimney lug, 
Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug, 

A manly form at her side she saw, 

And joy was duty and love was law. 

Then she took up her burden of life again, 
Saying only, “ It might have been.” 

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, 

For rich repiner and household drudge! 

God pity them both ! and pity us all, 

Who vainly the dreams of youth recall; 

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, 

The saddest are these : “ It might have been ! 

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes; 

And. in the hereafter, angels may 
Roll the stone from its grave away! 


-•O* 


MEMORIES. 



BEAUTIFUL and happy girl 

With step as soft as summer air, 
And fresh young lip and brow of pearl 
Shadow’d by many a careless curl 
Of unconfined and flowing hair: 


A seeming child in every thing 

Save thoughtful brow, and ripening 
charms, 

As nature wears the smile of spring 
When sinking into summer’s arms. 

O 













88 


JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


A mind rejoicing in the light 

Which melted through its graceful bower, 
Leaf after leaf serenely bright 
And stainless in its holy white 
Unfolding like a morning flower: 

A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute 
With every breath of feeling woke, 

And, even when the tongue was mute, 

From eye and lip in music spoke. 

How thrills once more the lengthening chain 
Of memory at the thought of thee !— 

Old hopes which long in dust have lain, 

Old dreams come thronging back again, 

And boyhood lives again in me; 

I feel its glow upon my cheek, 

Its fulness of the heart is mine, 

As when I lean’d to hear thee speak, 

Or raised my doubtful eye to thine. 

I hear again thy low replies, 

I feel thy arm within my own, 

And timidly again uprise 
The fringed lids of hazel eyes 

With soft brown tresses overblown. 

Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves, 

Of moonlit wave and willowy way, 

Of stars and flowers and dewy leaves, 

And smiles and tones more dear than they! 

Ere this thy quiet eye hath smiled 
My picture of thy youth to see, 

When half a woman, half a child, 

Thy very artlessness beguiled, 

And folly’s self seen!d wise in thee. 

I too can smile, when o’er that hour 

The lights of memory backward stream, 
Yet feel the while that manhood’s power 
Is vainer than my boyhood’s dream. 


Years have pass’d on, and left their trace 
Of graver care and deeper thought; 
And unto me the calm, cold face 
Of manhood, and to thee the grace 
Of woman’s pensive beauty brought. 

On life’s rough blasts for blame or praise 
The schoolboy's name has widely flown; 
Thine in the green and quiet ways 
Of unobtrusive goodness known. 

And wider yet in thought and deed 
Our still diverging thoughts incline, 
Thine the Genevan’s sternest creed, 

While answers to my spirit’s need 
The Yorkshire peasant’s simple line. 

For thee the priestly rite and prayer, 

And holy day and solemn psalm, 

For me the silent reverence where 
My brethren gather, slow and calm. 

Yet hath thy spirit left on me 

An impress time has not worn out, 

And something of myself in thee, 

A shadow from the past, I see 

Lingering even yet thy way about; 

Not wholly can the heart unlearn 
That lesson of its better hours, 

Not yet has Time’s dull footstep worn 
To common dust that path of flowers. 

Thus, while at times before our eye 
The clouds about the present part, 

And, smiling through them, round us lie 
Soft hues of memory's morning sky— 

The Indian summer of the heart, 

In secret sympathies of mind, 

In founts of feeling which retain 
Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find 
Our early dreams not wholly vain ! 


THE PRISONER FOR HERT. 


IK on him—through his dungeon-grate, 
Feebly and cold, the morning light 
Comes stealing round him, dim and late, 
•As if it loathed the sight. 

Reclining on his strawy bed, 

His hand upholds his drooping head— 

His bloodless cheek is seam’d and hard, 
Unshorn his gray, neglected beard ; 

And o’er his bony fingers flow 
His long, dishevell’d locks of snow. 

No grateful fire before him glows,— 

And yet the winter’s breath is chill: 


And o’er his half-clad person goes 
The frequent ague-thrill! 

Silent —save ever and anon, 

A sound, half-murmur and half-groan, 
Forces apart the painful grip 
Of the old sufferer’s bearded lip: 

0, sad and crushing is the fate 
Of old age chain’d and desolate ! 

Just God ! why lies that old man there ? 

A murderer shares his prison-bed, 
Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair, 
Gleam on him fierce and red; 












JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


89 


And the rude oath and heartless jeer 
Fall ever on his loathing ear, 

And, or in wakefulness or sleep 
Nerve, flesh, and fibre thrill and creep, 
Whene’er that ruffian’s tossing limb, 
Crimson’d with murder, touches him ! 

What has the gray-hair’d prisoner done ? 

Has murder stain’d his hands with gore ? 
Not so : his crime’s a fouler one : 

God made the old man poor ! 

For this he shares a felon's cell— 

The fittest earthly type of hell! 

For this—the boon for which he pour’d 
His young blood on the invader’s sword, 
And counted light the fearful cost— 

His blood-gain'd liberty is lost! 

And so, for such a place of rest, 

Old prisoner, pour’d thy blood as rain 
On Concord’s field, and Bunker’s crest, 
And Saratoga's plain ? 

Look forth, thou man of many scars, 
Through thy dim dungeon’s iron bars ! 

It must be joy, in sooth, to see 
Yon monument uprear’d to thee— 

Piled granite and a prison cell—- 
The land repays thy service well S 

Go, ring the bells and fire the guns, 

And fling the starry banner out; 


Shout “ Freedom !” till your lisping ones 
Give back their cradle-shout: 

Let boasted eloquence declaim 
Of honor, liberty, and fame ; 

Still let the poet’s strain be heard, 

With “ glory ” for each second word, 

And everything with breath agree 
To praise, “ our glorious liberty !” 

And when the patriot cannon jars 
That prison’s cold and gloomy wall, 

And through its grates the stripes and stars 
Rise on the wind, and fall— 

Think ye that prisoner’s aged ear 
Rejoices in the general cheer ! 

Think ye his dim and failing eye 
Is kindled at your pageantry ? 

Sorrowing of soul, and chain’d of limb, 
What is your carnival to him ? 

Down with the law that binds him thus! 

Unworthy freemen, let it find 
No refuge from the withering curse 
Of God and human kind ! 

Open the prisoner’s living tomb, 

And usher from its brooding gloom 
The victims of your savage code, 

To the free sun and air of God ! 

No longer dare as crime to brand, 

The chastening of the Almighty’s hand ! 


~*o+- 


THE STORM. 

FROM “SNOW-BOUND.” 


Snow-bound is regarded as Whittier’s master-piece, as a descriptive and reminiscent poem. It is a New 
England Fireside Idyl, which in its faithfulness recalls, “ The Winter Evening,” of Cowper, and Burns’ 
“Cotter’s Saturday Night” ; but in sweetness and animation, it is superior to either of these. Snow-bound 
is a faithful description of a winter scene, familiar in the country surrounding Whittier’s home in Connect¬ 
icut. The complete poem is published in illustrated form by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., by whose per- 
misssion this extract is here inserted. 



NWARNED by any sunset light 
The gray day darkened into night, 

A night made hoary with the swarm 
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 
As zigzag wavering to and fro 
Crossed and recrossed the winged snow; 
And ere the early bedtime came 
The white drift piled the window-frame, 
And through the glass the clothes-line posts 
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 


So all night long the storm roared on : 
The morning broke without a sun ; 

In tiny spherule traced with lines 


Of Nature’s geometric signs, 

In starry flake, and pellicle, 

All day the hoary meteor fell; 

And, when the second morning shone, 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent 
The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below,— 

A universe of sky and snow ! 

The old familiar sight of ours 

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers 

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, % 

Or garden wall, or belt of wood; 















90 


JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 
A fenceless drift what once was road; 

The bridle-post an old man sat 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; 

The well-curb had a Chinese roof; 

And even the long sweep, high aloof, 

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
Of Pisa’s leaning miracle. 

A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father wasted : “ Boys, a path ! ” 

Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy 


Count such a summons less than joy ? ) 
Our buskins on our feet we drew; 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 
We cut the solid whiteness through, 

And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid 
With dazzling crystal: we had read 
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave, 

And to our own his name we gave, 

With many a wish the luck were ours 
To test his lamp’s supernal powers. 


■•O*- 


ICHABOD. 


The following poem was written on hearing of Daniel Webster’s course in supporting the “Compromise 
Measure,” including the “Fugitive Slave Law”. This speed] was delivered in the United States Senate 
on the 7th of March, 1850, and greatly incensed the Abolitionists. Mr. Whittier, in common with many 
New Englanders, regarded it as the certain downfall of Mr. Webster. The lines are full of tender regret, 
deep grief and touching pathos. 


0 fallen ! so lust! the light withdrawn 
Which once he w r ore ! 

The glory from his gray hairs gone 
For evermore! 

Bevile him not,—the Tempter hath 
A snare for all! 

And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 
Befit his fall. 

Oh ! dumb be passion’s stormy rage, 
When he who might 

Have lighted up and led his age 
Falls back in night. 

Scorn ! would the angels laugh to mark 
A bright soul driven, 

Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, 
From hope and heaven? 

Let not the land, once proud of him. 
Insult him now, 


Nor brand with deeper shame his dim 
Dishonor’d brow\ 

But let its humbled sons, instead, 

From sea to lake, 

A long lament, as for the dead, 

In sadness make. 

• 

Of all we loved and honor’d, nought 
Save power remains,— 

A fallen angel's pride of thought 
Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone ; from those great eyes 
The soul has fled : 

When faith is lost, when honor dies, 
The man is dead ! 

Then pay the reverence of old days 
To his dead fame; 

Walk backward with averted gaze, 

And hide the shame ! 
















* 


% 











































OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

POET, ESSAYIST AND HUMORIST. 


HIS distinguished author, known and admired throughout the Eng¬ 
lish speaking world for the rich vein of philosophy, good fellowship 
and pungent humor that runs through his poetry and prose, was born 
in Cambridge, Massachussetts, August 29th, 1809, and died in Bos¬ 
ton, October 27th 1894, at the ripe old age of eighty-five—the “ last 
leaf on the tree” of that famous group, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, 
Emerson, Bryant, Poe, Willis, Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, Thoreau, Mar¬ 
garet Fuller and others who laid the foundation of our national literature, and with 
all of whom he was on intimate terms as a co-laborer at one time or another. 

Holmes graduated at Harvard College in 1829. His genial disposition made him 
a favorite with his fellows, to whom some of his best early poems are dedicated. 
One of his classmates said of him :—“He made you feel like you were the best fel¬ 
low in the world and he was the next best.” Benjamin Pierce, the astronomer, and 
Rev. Samuel F. Smith, the author of our National Hymn, were his class-mates and 
have been wittily described in his poem “ The Boys.” Dr. Holmes once humorously 
said that he supposed “ the three people whose poems were best known were himself, 
one Smith and one Brown. As for himself, everybody knew who he was ; the one 
Brown was author of ‘ I love to Steal a While Away/ and the one Smith was 
author of ‘My Country ’Tis of Thee.’” 

After graduation Holmes studied medicine in the schools of Europe, but returned 
to finish his course and take his degree at Harvard. For nine years he was Profes¬ 
sor of Physiology and Anatomy at Dartmouth College, and in 1847 he accepted a 
similar position in Harvard University, to which his subsequent professional labors 
were devoted. He also published several works on medicine, the last being a volume 
of medical essays, issued in 1883. 

Holmes’ first poetic publication was a small volume published in 1836, including 
three poems which still remain favorites, namely, “ My Aunt,” “The height of the 
Ridiculous ” and “ The Last Leaf on the Tree.” Other volumes of his poems were 
issued in 1846, 1850, 1861, 1875 and 1880. 

Dr. Holmes is popularly known as the poet of society, this title attaching because 
most of his productions were called forth by special occasions. About one hundred 
of them were prepared for his Harvard class re-unions and his fraternity (Phi Beta 
Kappa) social and anniversary entertainments. The poems which will preserve 

his fame, however, are those of a general interest, like “The Deacon’s Masterpiece,” 

91 



































92 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 


in which the Yankee spirit speaks out, “The Voiceless,” “The Living Temple,” 
“ The Chambered Nautilus,” in which we find a truly exalted treatment of a lofty 
theme ; “ The Last Leaf on the Tree,’ which is a remarkable combination of pathos 
and humor; “The Spectre Pig” and “The Ballad of an Oysterman,” showing to 
what extent he can play in real fun. In fact, Dr. Holmes was a many-sided man, 
and equally presentable on all sides. It has been truthfully said of him, “ No other 
American versifier has rhymed so easily and so gracefully. We might further add, 
no other in his personality, has been more universally esteemed and beloved by those 
who knew him. 

As a prose writer Holmes was equally famous. His “ Autocrat at the Breakfast 
Table,” “ Professor at the Breakfast Table ” and “ Poet at the Breakfast Table,” 
published respectively in 1858, 1859 and 1873, are everywhere known, and not to 
have read them is to have neglected something important in literature. The 
“ Autocrat ” is especially a masterpiece. An American boarding house with its 
typical characters forms the scene. The Autocrat is the hero, or rather leader, of 
the sparkling conversations which make up the threads of the book. Humor, satire 
and scholarship are skilfully mingled in its graceful literary formation. In this 
work will also be found “ The Wonderful One Horse Shay ” and “ The Chambered 
Nautilus,” two of the author’s best poems. 

Holmes wrote two novels, “ Elsie Venner ” and “The Guardian Angel,” which 
in their romance rival the weirdness of Hawthorne and show his genius in 
this line of literature. “Mechanism in Thought and Morals” (1871), is a 
scholarly essay on the function of the brain. As a biographer Dr. Holmes has also 
given us excellent memoirs of John Lothrop Motley, the historian, and Balpli 
Waldo Emerson. Among his later products may be mentioned “A Mortal Anti¬ 
pathy,” which appeared in 1885, and “One Hundred Days in Europe” (1887). 

Holmes was one of the projectors of “ The Atlantic Monthly,” which was started 
in 1857, in conjunction with Longfellow, Lowell and Emerson, Lowell being its 
editor. It was to this periodical that the “ Autocrat ” and “ The Professor at the 
Breakfast Table” were contributed. These papers did much to secure the perman¬ 
ent fame of this magazine. It is said that its name was suggested by Holmes, and 
he is also credited with first attributing to Boston the distinction of being the “ Hub 
of the solar system,” which he, with a mingling of humor and local pride, declared 
was “ located exactly at the Boston State House.” 

Unlike other authors, the subject of this sketch was very much himself at all 
times and under all conditions. Holmes the man, Holmes the professor of physio¬ 
logy, the poet, philosopher, and essayist, were all one and the same genial soul. 
His was the most companionable of men, whose warm flow of fellowship and good 
cheer the winters of four score years and five could not chill,—“ The last Leaf on 
the Tree,” whose greenness the frost could not destroy. He passed away at the age 
of eighty-five still verdantly young in spirit, and the world will smile for many 
generations good naturedly because he lived. Such lives are a benediction to the race. 

Finally, to know Holmes’ writings well, is to be made acquainted with a singularly 
lovable nature. The charms of his personality are irresistible. Among the poor, 
among the literary, and among the society notables, he was ever the most welcome 
of guests. His geniality, humor, frank, hearty manliness, generosity and readiness 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 


93 


to amuse and be amused, together with an endless store of anecdotes, his tact and 
union of sympathy and originality, make him the best of companions for an hour 
or for a lifetime. His friendship is generous and enduring. All of these qualities 
of mind and heart are felt as the reader runs through his poems or his prose writ¬ 
ings. We feel that Holmes has lived widely and found life good. It is precisely 
for this reason that the reading of his writings is a good tonic. It sends the blood 
more courageously through the veins. After reading Holmes, we feel that life is 
easier and simpler and a finer affair altogether and more worth living for than we 
had been wont to regard it. 

The following paragraph published in a current periodical shortly after the death 
of Mr. Holmes throws further light upon the personality of this distinguished 
author: 

“ Holmes himself must have harked back to forgotten ancestors for his brightness. 
His father was a dry as dust Congregational preacher, of whom some one said that 
he fed his jieople sawdust out of a spoon. But from his childhood Holmes was 
bright and popular. One of his college friends said of him at Harvard, that ‘die 
made you think you were the best fellow in the world, and he was the next best.’” 

Dr. Holmes was first and foremost a conversationalist. He talked even on paper. 
There was never the dullness of the written word. His sentences whether in prose 
or verse were so full of color that they bore the charm of speech. 

One of his most quoted poems “ Dorothy Q,” is full ot this sparkle, and carries 
a suggestion of his favorite theme : 


Grandmother’s mother : her age I guess 
Thirteen summers, or something less; 

Girlish bust, but womanly air ; 

Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair; 
Lips that lover has never kissed; 

Taper fingers and slender wrist; 

Hankins: sleeves of stiff brocade ; 

So they painted the little maid. 

* * * * * 

What if a hundred years ago 
Those close shut lips had answered No, 
When forth the tremulous question came 
That cost the maiden her Norman name, 
And under the folds that looked so still 
The bodice swelled with the bosom’s thrill ? 
Should I be I, or would it be 
One tenth another to nine tenths me ? 


94 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 


BILL AND JOE. 


OME, dear old comrade, you and I 

Will steal an hour from days gone by— 
The shining days when life was new, 
And all was bright as morning dew, 

The lusty days of long ago, 

When you were Bill and I was Joe. 

Your name may flaunt a titled trail, 

Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail: 

And mine as brief appendix wear 
As Tam O’Shanter’s luckless mare ; 

To-day, old friend, remember still 
That I am Joe and you are Bill. 

You’ve won the great world’s envied prize, 

And grand you look in people’s eyes, 

With HON. and LL.D., 

In biir brave letters, fair to see— 

O 7 

Your fist, old fellow ! oft' they go !— 

How are you, Bill ? How are you, Joe ? 

You’ve worn the judge's ermined robe ; 

You’ve taught your name to half the globe; 
You’ve sung mankind a deathless strain ; 

You’ve made the dead past live again ; 

The world may call you what it will, 

But you and I are Joe and Bill. 

The chaffing young folks stare and say, 

“ See those old buffers, bent and gray ; 

They talk like fellows in their teens ! 

Mad, poor old boys ! That’s what it means’’— 
And shake their heads; they little know 
The throbbing hearts of Bill and Joe— 


How Bill forgets his hour of pride, 

While Joe sits smiling at his side ; 

How Joe, in spite of time’s disguise, 

Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes— 
Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill 
As Joe looks fondly up at Bill. 

Ah, pensive scholar ! what is fame ? 

A fitful tongue of leaping flame; 

A giddy whirlwind’s fickle gust, 

That lifts a pinch of mortal dust; 

A few swift years, and who can show 
Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe ? 

The weary idol takes his stand, 

Holds out his bruised and aching hand, 
While gaping thousands come and go— 
How vain it seems, this empty show — 

Till all at once his pulses thrill : 

’Tis poor old Joe’s “ God bless you, Bill!” 

And shall we breathe in happier spheres 
The names that pleased our mortal ears,— 
In some sweet lull of harp and song, 

For earth-born spirits none too long, 

Just whispering of the world below, 

Where this was Bill, and that was Joe? 

No matter ; while our home is here 
No sounding name is half so dear ; 

When fades at length our lingering day, 
Who cares what pompous tombstones say ? 
Bead on the hearts that love us still 
Hie jacet Joe. Hie jacet Bill. 



O* 


UNION AND LIBERTY. 



LAG of the heroes who left us their glory, 
Borne through their battle-fields’ thun¬ 
der and flame, 

Blazoned in song and illuminated in story, 
Wave o’er us all who inherit their fame. 

Up with our banner bright, 

Sprinkled with starry light, 

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, 
While through the sounding sky 
Loud rings the Nation’s cry— 

Union and Liberty! One Evermore! 


Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation, 
Pride of her children, and honored afar, 

Let the wide beams of thy full constellation 
Scatter each cloud that would darken a star ! 
Empire unsceptred ! What foe shall assail thee 
Bearing the standard of Liberty’s van ? 


Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee, 
Striving with men for the birthright of man !. 

Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted, 

Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must 
draw, 

Then with the arms to thy million united, 

Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law ! 

Lord of the universe ! shield us and guide us, 

Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun ! 
Thou hast united us, who shall divide us? 

Keep us, 0 keep us the Many in One ! 

Up with our banner bright, 

Sprinkled with starry light, 

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, 
While through the sounding sky 
Loud rings the Nation’s cry— 

Union and Liberty! One Evermore! 
















OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 


95 


OLD IRON SIDES. 


The following poem has become a National Lyric. It was first printed in the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” 
when the Frigate “ Constitution ” lay in the navy-yard at Charlestown. The department had resolved 
upon breaking her up ; but she was preserved from this fate by the following verses, which ran through the 
newspapers with universal applause; and, according to “Benjamin’s American Monthly Magazine,” of 
January, 18:17, it was printed in the form of hand-bills, and circulated in the city of Washington . 


Y, tear her tatter’d ensign down ! 

Long has it waved on high, 

And many an eye has danced to see 
That banner in the sky; 

Beneath it rung the battle-shout, 

And burst the cannon’s roar ; 

The meteor of the ocean air 

Shall sweep the clouds no more! 

Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood, 
Where knelt the vanquish’d foe, 

When winds were hurrying o’er the flood, 
And waves were white below, 



No more shall feel the victor’s tread, 
Or know the conquer’d knee ; 

The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
The eagle of the sea ! 

0, better that her shatter'd hulk 
Should sink beneath the wave; 

Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 
And there should be her grave; 

Nail to the mast her holy flag, 

Set every threadbare sail, 

And give her to the god of storms,— 
The lightning and the gale ! 


MY AUNT. 


Y aunt! my dear unmarried aunt! 
Long years have o’er her flown ; 
Yet still she strains the aching clasp 
That binds her virgin zone; 

I know it hurts her,—though she looks 
As cheerful as she can ; 

Her waist is ampler than her life, 

For life is but a span. 


They braced my aunt against a board, 

To make her straight and tall; 

They laced her up, they starved her down, 
To make her light and small; 

They pinch’d her feet, they singed her hair 
They screw’d it up with pins,— 

Oh, never mortal suffer’d more 
In penance for her sins. 



My aunt, my poor deluded aunt! 

Her hair is almost gray ; 

Why will she train that winter curl 
In such a spring-like way ? 

How can she lay her glasses down, 
And say she reads as well, 

When, through a double convex lens, 
She just makes out to spell? 

Her father—grandpapa ! forgive 
This erring lip its smiles— 

Vow’d she would make the finest girl 
Within a hundred miles. 

He sent her to a stylish school; 

’Twas in her thirteenth June ; 

And with her, as the rules required, 

“ Two towels and a spoon.” 


So, when my precious aunt was done, 
My grandsire brought her back 
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth 
Might follow on the track); 
u Ah ! ” said my grandsire, as he shook 
Some powder in his pan, 

“ What could this lovely creature do 
Against a desperate man!” 

Alas ! nor chariot, nor barouche, 

Nor bandit cavalcade 
Tore from the trembling father’s arms 
His all-accomplish’d maid. 

For her how happy had it been ! 

And Heaven had spared to me 
To see one sad, ungather’d rose 
On my ancestral tree. 


- 

\ 


THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS. 



WROTE some lines once on a time 
In wondrous merry mood, 

And thought, as usual, men would say 
They were exceeding good. 


They were so queer, so very queer, 
I laugh’d as I would die; 

Albeit, in the general way, 

A sober man am I. 


















96 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 


:v 


I call'd my servant, and lie came: 

How kind it was of him, 

To mind a slender man like me, 

He of the mighty limb ! 

“ These to the printer,” I exclaim’d, 
And, in my humorous way, 

I added (as a trifling jest), 

“ There'll be the devil to pay.” 

He took the paper, and I watch’d, 
And saw him peep within; 

At the first line he read, his face 
Was all upon the grin. 


He read the next; the grin grew broad, 
And shot from ear to ear; 

He read the third ; a chuckling noise 
I now began to hear. 

The fourth ; he broke into a roar; 

The fifth, his waistband split; 

The sixth, he burst five buttons off, 

And tumbled in a fit. 

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, 
I watch’d that wretched man, 

And since, I never dare to write 
As funny as I can. 


THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 


HIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
Sails the unshadow’d main,— 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled 
wings 

In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming 
hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; 

Wreck’d is the ship of pearl! 

And every chamber’d cell, 

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies reveal’d,— 

Its iris’d ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unseal’d ! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 
That spread his lustrous coil; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new, 


Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 
Built up its idle door, 

Stretch’d in his last-found home, and knew the old 
no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 
Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap, forlorn ! 

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice 
that sings:— 

Build thee more stately mansions, 0 my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea ! 



-- 

- ' ■ m 

OLD AGE AND THE PROFESSOR. 


Mr. Holmes is as famous for liis prose as for his poetry, 
happy and varied style. 

LD AGE, this is Mr. Professor; Mr. Pro¬ 
fessor, this is Old Age. 

Old Age. —Mr. Professor, I hope to see 
you well. I have known you for some time, though 
I think you did not know me. Shall we walk down 
the street together? 

Professor (drawing back a little).—We can talk 
more quietly, perhaps, in my study. Will you tell 


The following sketches are characteristic of his 

me how it is you seem to be acquainted with every¬ 
body you are introduced to, though he evidently con¬ 
siders you an entire stranger ? 

Old Age .—I make it a rule never to force myself 
upon a person’s recognition until I have known him 
at least five years. 

Professor .—Do you mean to say that you have 
known me so long as that ? 



















OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 


Old Age. I do. I left my card on you longer 
ago than that, but I am afraid you never read it; 
yet I see you have it with you. 

Professor .—Where ? 

Old Age. —There, between your eyebrows,—three 
straight lines running up and down ; all the probate 
courts know that token,—“ Old Age, his mark.” Put 
your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and 
your middle finger on the inner end of the other eye¬ 
brow ; now separate the fingers, and you will smooth 
out my sign manual; that’s the way you used to look 
before I left my card on you. 

Professor .—W hat message do people generally send 
back when you first call on them ? 


97 

Old Age.—Not at home. Then I leave a card 
and go. Next year I call 5 get the same answer; 
leave another card. So for five or six—sometimes 
ten—years or more. At last, if they don’t let me in, 
I break in through the front door or the windows. 

We talked together in this way some time. Then 
Old Age said again,—Come, let us walk down the 
street together,—and offered me a cane,—an eye-glass? 
a tippet, and a pair of overshoes.—No, much obliged 
to you, said I. I don’t want those things, and I had 
a little rather talk with you here, privately, in my study. 
So I dressed myself up in a jaunty way and walked 
out alone ;—got a fall, caught a cold, was laid up with a 
lumbago, and had time to think over this whole matter. 


THE BRAIN. 



UR brains are seventy-year clocks. The 
Angel of Life winds them up once for all, 
then closes the case, and gives the key into 
the hands of the Angel of the Resurrection. 

Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our 
will cannot stop them ; they cannot stop themselves; 


sleep cannot still them ; madness only makes them go 
faster; death alone can break into the case, and, 
seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call 
the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible 
escapement we have carried so long beneath our 
wrinkled foreheads. 


-♦O* 


MY LAST WALK WITH 

. CAN’T say just how many walks she and 

PH ^ ^ad f a ^ en before this one. I found 
-- the effect of going out every morning 

was decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing 
dimples, the places for which were just marked when 
she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks 
w T hen she smiled and nodded good-morning to me 
from the schoolhouse steps. * * * 

The schoolmistress had tried life. Once in a while 
one meets with a single soul greater than all the 
living pageant that passes before it. As the pale 
astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and 
thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a 
balance, so there are meek, slight women who have 
weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and 
hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender 
hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left 
her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor 
and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life were 
before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, 
gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was often 
7 


THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS. 

sprightly, as she became interested in the various 
matters we talked about and places we visited, I 
saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament 
were made for love,—unconscious of their sweet office 
as yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the 
natural graces which were meant for the reward of 
nothing less than the Great Passion. 

It was on the Common that we were walking. 

O 

The mall , or boulevard of our Common, you know, 
has various branches leading from it in different 
directions. One of these runs downward from oppo¬ 
site Joy Street southward across the whole length of 
the Common to Boylston Street. We called it the 
long path, and were fond of it. 

I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably 
robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this 
path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice 
without making myself distinctly audible. At last I 
got out the question,—Will you take the long path 
with me ? Certainly,—said the schoolmistress,—with 
much pleasure. Think,—I said,—before you answer: 

















98 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 


if you take the long path with me now, I shall in¬ 
terpret it that we are to part no more ! The school¬ 
mistress stepped back with a sudden movement, as if 
an arrow had struck her. 

One of the long granite blocks used as seats was 
hard by,—the one you may still see close by the 


Gingko-tree. Pray, sit down,—I said. No, no,—she 
answered softly,—I will walk the long path with you ! 

The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walk¬ 
ing, arm in arm, about the middle of the long path, 
and said, very charmingly,—“ Good-morning, my 
dears! ” 


o 


A RANDOM CONVERSATION 

ON OLD MAXIMS, BOSTON AND OTHER TOWNS. 
(From “ The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.’'’) 


IN has many tools, but a lie is the handle 
which fits them all. 

I think Sir,—said the divinity student, 
—you must intend that for one of the sayings of the 
Seven Wise men of Boston you were speaking of the 
other day. 

I thank you, my young friend,—was the reply,— 
but I must say something better than that, before I 
could pretend to fill out the number. 

The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of 
these sayings there w T ere on record, and what, and by 
whom said. 

Why, let us see,—there is that one of Benjamin 
Franklin, “ the great Bostonian,'’ after whom this 
land was named. To be sure, he said a great many 
wise things,—and I don’t feel sure he didn’t borrow 
this,—he speaks as if it were old. But then he ap¬ 
plied .it so neatly !— 

“ He that has once done you a kindness will be 
more ready to do you another than he whom you 
yourself have obliged.” 

Then there is that glorious Epicurean, paradox, 
uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his 
flashing; moments:— 

“ Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense 
with its necessaries.” 

To these must certainly be added that other saying 
of one of the wittiest of men :— 

“ Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.” 

The divinity student looked grave at her, but 
said nothing. 

The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn’t 
think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only 
another way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place after 
New York or Boston. 


A jaunty looking person, who had come in with 
the young fellow they call John,—evidently a 
stranger,—said there was one more wise man’s say¬ 
ing that he had heard; it was about our place, but 
he didn’t know who said it.—A civil curiosity was 
manifested by the company to hear the fourth wise 
saying. I heard him distinctly whispering to the 
young fellow who brought him to dinner, Shall I tell 
it? To which the answer was, Go ahead! —Well,— 
he said,—this was what I heard :— 

“ Boston State-House is the hub of the solar 
system. You couldn’t pry that out of a Boston man, 
if you had the tire of all creation straightened out 
for a crow-bar.” 

Sir,—said I,—I am gratified with your remark. 
It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have 
sometimes heard uttered with malignant dullness. 
The satire of the remark is essentially true of Bos¬ 
ton,—and of all other considerable—and inconsider¬ 
able—places with which I have had the privilege of 
being acquainted. Cockneys think London is the 
only place in the world. Frenchmen—you remember 
the line about Paris, the Court, the World, etc.—I 
recollect well, by the way, a sign in that city which 
ran thus : “ Hotel de 1’Uni vers et des Etats Unis 
and as Paris is the universe to a Frenchman, of course 
the United States are outside of it. “ See Naples 
and then die.” It is quite as bad with smaller places. 
I have been about lecturing, you know, and have 
found the following propositions to hold true of all 
of them. 

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through 
the center of each and every town or city. 

2. If more than fifty years have passed since its 
foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhabi- 














OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 


99 


tants the “good old town of-” (what¬ 

ever its name may happen to be). 

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes 
together to listen to a stranger is invariably declared 
to be a “ remarkably intelligent audience.” 

4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable 
to longevity. 

5. It contains several persons of vast talent little 
known to the world. (One or two of them, you may 
perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces to the 
“ Pactolian ” some time since, which were “ respect¬ 
fully declined.”) 

Boston is just like other places of its size—only, 
perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid 
fire department, superior monthly publications, and 
correct habit of spelling the English language, it has 
some right to look down on the mob of cities. I’ll 
tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the 
real offense of Boston. It drains a large water-shed 
of its intellect, and will not itself be drained. If it 
would only send away its first-rate men instead of its 
second-rate ones (no offense to the well-known excep¬ 
tions, of which we are always proud), we should be 
spared such epigrammatic remarks as that the 
gentleman has quoted. There can never be a real 
metropolis in this country until the biggest centre can 
drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth. I 
have observed, by the way, that the people who really 
live in two great cities are by no means so jealous of 
each other, as are those of smaller cities situated within 
the intellectual basin, or suction range, of one large 
one, of the pretensions of any other. Don’t you see 
why? Because their promising young author and 
risinjjc lawyer and large capitalist have been drained 
off to the neighboring big city,—their prettiest girls 
have exported to the same market; all their ambition 
points there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes 
from there. I hate little, toad-eating cities. 


Would I be so good as to specify any particular 
example?—Oh,—an example? Did you ever see a 
bear trap? Never? Well, shouldn’t you like to see 
me put my foot into one? With sentiments of the 
highest consideration I must beg leave to be excused. 

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. 
If they have an old church or two, a few stately 
mansions of former grandees, here and there an old 
dwelling with the second story projecting (for the 
convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the 
front-door with their tomahawks)—if they have, 
scattered about, those mighty square houses built 
something more than half a century ago, and stand¬ 
ing like architectural boulders dropped by the former 
diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left 
them as its monument,—if they have gardens with 
elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over the 
high board-fence and drop their fruit on the side¬ 
walk,—if they have a little grass in their side-streets, 
enough to betoken quiet without proclaiming decay,— 
I think I could go to pieces, after my life’s tranquil 
places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an old man 
may be rocked to sleep in. I visit such spots always 
j with infinite delight. My friend, the Poet, says, that 
rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the 
imaginative and reflective faculties. Let a man live 
in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine 
of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by the 
rattle of busy streets, settles, and as you hold it up, 
you may see the sun through it by day and the stars 
by night. 

Do I think that the little villages have the conceit 
of the great towns? I don’t believe there is much 
difference. You know how they read Pope’s line in 
the smallest town in our State of Massachusetts? 
Well, they read it,— 

“All are but parts of one stupendous Hull!” 









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JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

POET, CRITIC, AND ESSAYIST. 

HILE the popularity of Lowell lias not been so great as that of Whit¬ 
tier, Longfellow or Holmes, his poetry expresses a deeper thought 
and a truer culture than that of any one of these; or, indeed, of any 
other American poet, unless the exception be the “transcendental 
philosopher,” Emerson. As an anti-slavery poet, he was second 
only to Whittier. 

James Russell Lowell was born in Cambridge, Mass., February 22, 1819, and 
died in the same city on August 12, 1891, in the seventy-third year of his age. He 
was the youngest son of the Rev. Charles Lowell, an eminent Congregational clergy¬ 
man, and was descended from the English settlers of 1639. He entered Harvard 
in his seventeenth year and graduated in 1838, before he was twenty. He began 
to write verses early. In his junior year in college he wrote the anniversary poem, 
and, in his senior year, was editor of the college magazine. Subsequently, he 
studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1840; but, it seems, never entered 
upon the practice of his profession. If he did it is doubtful if he ever had even 
that first client whom lie afterwards described in a humorous sketch. 

His first appearance in literature was the publication, in 1839, of the class poem 
which he had written, but was not permitted to recite on account of his temporary 
suspension from College for neglect of certain studies in the curriculum for which he 
had a distaste. In this poem lie satirized the Abolitionists, and the transcendental 
school of writers, of which Emerson was the prophet and leader. This poem, while 
faulty, contained much sharp wit and an occasional burst of feeling which por¬ 
tended future prominence for its author. 

Two years later, in 1841, the first volume of Lowell’s verse appeared, entitled 
“A Year’s Life.” This production was so different from that referred to above that 
critics would have regarded it as emanating from an entirely different mind had not 
the same name been attached to both. It illustrated entirely different feelings, 
thoughts and habits, evinced a complete change of heart and an entire revolution in 
his mode of thinking. His observing and suggestive imagination had caught the 
tone and spirit of the new and mystical philosophy, which his first publication had 
ridiculed. Henceforth, he aimed to make Nature the representative and minister 
of his feelings and desires. Lowell was not alone, however, in showing how capri¬ 
cious a young author’s character may be. A notable parallel is found in the great 

100 














































AMES RUSSELL LOWELL IN HIS STUDY. 































JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 


101 


Englishman, Carlyle whose “ Life of Schiller ” and his “ Sator Resartus,” are 
equally as unlike himself as were Lowells first two publications. In 1844, came 
another volume of poems, manifesting a still further mark of advancement. The 
longest in this collection—“ The Legend of Brittany ”—is, in imagination and artis¬ 
tic finish, one of his best and secured the first general consent for the author’s 
admission into the company of men of genius. 

During this same year (1844) Mr. Lowell married the poetess, Maria White, an 
ardent Abolitionist, whose anti-slavery convictions influenced his after career. Two 
of Mrs. Lowell’s poems, “ The Alpine Sheep ” and the “ Morning Glory ” are 
especially popular. Lowell was devotedly attached to his singularly beautiful and 



HOME OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 


sympathetic poet wife and made her the subject of some of his most exquisite verses. 
They were both contributors to the “ Liberty Bell ” and “ Anti-slavery Standard, 

thus enjoving companionship in their labors. 

In 1845, appeared Lowell’s “ Conversation on Some Old Poets,” consisting of a 
series of criticisms, and discussions which evince a caieful and delicate study. 1 his 
was the beginning of the critical work in which he afteiwaid became so famous, that 

he was styfed “The First Critic of America.” 

Lowell was also a humorist by nature. His irrepressible perception of the comi¬ 
cal and the funny find expression everywhere, both in his poetry and prose. His 






















102 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 


“Fable for Critics” was a delight to those whom lie both satirized and criticised in a 
good-natured manner. Bryant, Poe, Hawthorne and Whittier, each are made to pass 
in procession for their share of criticism—which is as excellent as amusing—and 
Carlyle and Emerson are contrasted admirably. This poem, however, is faulty in 
execution and does not do its author justice. His masterpiece in humor is the famous 
“Biglow Papers.” These have been issued in two parts; the first being inspired by 
the Mexican War, and the latter by the Civil War between the states. Hosea Biglow, 
the country Yankee philosopher and supposed author of the papers, and the Rev. 
Homer Wilber, his learned commentator and pastor of the first church at Jaalem, 
reproduce the Yankee dialect, and portray the Yankee character as faithfully as 
they are amusing and funny to the reader. 

In 1853, Mrs. Lowell died, on the same night in which a daughter was born to the 
poet Longfellow, who was a neighbor and a close friend to Lowell. The coincident 
inspired Longfellow to write a beautiful poem, “The Two Angels,” which he sent 
to Mr. Lowell with his expression of sympathy: 


“ Twas at thy door, 0 friend, and not at mine 
The angel with the amaranthine Tvreath, 
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine 
Uttered a word that had a sound like death. 

“ Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, 

A shaddow on those features fair and thin, 

And slowly, from that hushed and darkened room, 
Two angels issued, where but one went in. 

“ Angels of life and death alike are His; 

Without His leave, they pass no threshold o’er : 
Who then would wish, or dare, believing this, 
Against His messengers to shut the door?” 


Quite iu contrast with Lowell, the humorist, is Lowell, the serious and dignified 
author. His patriotic poems display a courage and manliness in adhering to the 
right and cover a wide range in history. But it is in his descriptions of nature 
that his imagination manifests its greatest range of subtilty and power. “The 
Vision of Sir Launfal” is, perhaps, more remarkable for its descriptions of the 
months of June and December than for the beautiful story it tells of the search for 
the “ Holy Grail ” (the cup) which held the wine which Christ and the Apostles 
drank at the last supper. 

Lowell’s prose writings consist of his contributions to magazines, which were 
afterwards gathered in book form, and his public addresses and his political essavs. 
He was naturally a poet, and his prose writings were the outgrowth of his daily 
labors, rather than a work of choice. As a professor of modern languages in Har¬ 
vard College (in which position he succeeded the poet Longfellow); as editor of the 
“Atlantic Monthly,” on which duty he entered at the beginning of that magazine, 
in 1857, his editorial work on the “North American Review” from 1863 to 1872, 
together with his political ministry in Spain and England, gave him, he says, “ quite 
enough prosaic work to do.” 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 


103 


It was to magazines that he first contributed “Fireside Travels/’ “ Amo no- My 
Books, and “ My Study Window,” which have been since published in book form, 
lliese publications cover a wide field ol literature and impress the reader with a 
spirit of inspiration and enthusiasm. Lowell, like Emerson and Longfellow, was 
an optimist of the most pronounced type. In none of his writing does he express 
a syllable of discontent or despair. His “ Pictures from Appledore ” and “ Under 
the Willows” are not more sympathetic and spontaneous than his faith in mankind, 
his healthful nature, and his rosy and joyful hope of the future. 

In 1877, Mr. Lowell was appointed minister to Spain by President Hayes, and, 
in 1880, was transferred, in the same capacity to London. This position he 
resigned in 1885 and returned to America to resume his lectures in Harvard Uni¬ 
versity. \V hile in England, Mr. Lowell was lionized as no other minister at that 
time had been and was in great demand as a public lecturer and speaker. Oliver 
Wendell Plolmes thus writes of his popularity with the “ British Cousins:” 


By what enchantment, what alluring arts. 

Our truthful James led captive British hearts,— 

* * * * * * 

Like honest Yankees we can simply guess; 

But that he did it, all must needs confess.” 


Pie delivered a memorial address at the unveiling of the bust of the poet Coleridge 
in Westminster Abbey. On his return to America, this oration was included with 
others in his volume entitled “Democracy and Other Addresses.” (1887). 

As a public man, a representative of the United States Government, in foreign 
ports, he upheld the noblest ideals of the republic. He taught the purest lessons of 
patriotism—ever preferring his country to his party—and has criticised, with 
energy, and indignation, political evils and selfishness in public service, regarding 
these as the most dangerous elements threatening the dignity and honor of American 
citizenship. 

Among scholars, Lowell, next to Emerson, is regarded the profoundest of American 
poets; and, as the public becomes more generally educated, it is certain that he will 
grow in popular favor. To those who understand and catch the spirit of the.man, 
noticeable characteristics of his writings are its richness and variety. He is at once, 
a humorist, a philosopher, and a dialectic verse writer, an essayist, a critic, and a 
masterful singer of songs of freedom as well as of the most majestic memorial odes. 

Unlike Longfellow and Holmes, Lowell never wrote a novel ; but his insight into 
character and ability to delineate it would have made it entirely possible for him to 
assay, successfully, this branch of literature. This power is seen especially in his 
“Biglow Papers” as well as in other of his character sketches. The last of 
Lowell’s works published was “ Latest Literary Essays and Addresses,” issued in 
1892, after his death. 


104 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 


THE GOTHIC GENIUS. 

FROM “ THE CATHEDRAL.” 


SEEM to have heard it said by learned folk, 
Who drench you with aesthetics till you feel 
As if all beauty were a ghastly bore, 

The faucet to let loose a wash of words, 
That Gothic is not Grecian, therefore worse; 

But, being convinced by much experiment 
How little inventiveness there is in man, 

Grave copier of copies, I give thanks 
For a new relish, careless to inquire 
My pleasure’s pedigree, if so it please— 

Nobly I mean, nor renegade to art. 

The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness, 
Unanswerable.as Euclid, self-contained, 

The one thing finished in this hasty world— 

For ever finished, though the barbarous pit, 
Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout 
As if a miracle could be encored. 


But ah ! this other, this that never ends, 

Still climbing, luring Fancy still to climb, 

As full of morals half divined as life, 

Graceful, grotesque, with ever-new surprise 
Of hazardous caprices sure to please; 

Heavy as nightmare, airy-light as fern, 
Imagination’s very self in stone! 

With one long sigh of infinite release 
From pedantries past, present, or to come, 

I looked, and owned myself a happy Goth. 

Your blood is mine, ye architects of dream, 
Builders of aspiration incomplete, 

So more consummate, souls self-confident, 

Who felt your own thought w T orthy of record 
In monumental pomp ! No Grecian drop 
Rebukes these veins that leap with kindred thrill, 
After long exile, to the mother tongue. 



* 0 +- 


THE BOSE. 


I. 

his tower sat the poet 

Gazing on the roaring sea, 

Take this rose,” he sighed, “and throw it 
Where there’s none that loveth me. 

On the rock the billow bursteth, 

And sinks back into the seas, 

But in vain my spirit thirsteth 
So to burst and be at ease. 

Take, 0 sea ! the tender blossom 
That hath lain against my breast; 

On thy black and angry bosom 
It will find a surer rest, 

Life is vain, and love is hollow, 

Ugly death stands there behind, 

Hate, and scorn, and hunger follow 
Him that toileth for his kind.” 

Forth into the night he hurled it, 

And with bitter smile did mark 
How the surly tempest whirled it 
Swift into the hungry dark. 

Foam and spray drive back to leeward, 

And the gale, with dreary moan, 

Drifts the helpless blossom seaward, 

Through the breaking, all alone. 

II. 

Stands a maiden, on the morrow, 

Musing by the wave-beat strand, 


Half in hope, and half in sorrow 
Tracing words upon the sand : 

“ Shall I ever then behold him 

Who hath been my life so long,— 
Ever to this sick heart fold him,— 
Be the spirit of his song ? 

“ Touch not, sea, the blessed letters 
I have traced upon thy shore, 
Spare his name whose spirit fetters 
Mine with love forever more ! ” 
Swells the tide and overflows it, 

But with omen pure and meet, 
Brings a little rose and throws it 
Humbly at the maiden’s feet. 

Full of bliss she takes the token, 
And, upon her snowy breast, 
Soothes the ruffled petals broken 
With the ocean’s fierce unrest. 

“ Love is thine, 0 heart! and surely 
Peace shall also be thine own, 

For the heart that trusteth purely 
Never long can pine alone.” 

III. 

In his tower sits the poet, 

Blisses new, and strange to him 
Fill his heart and overflow it 
With a wonder sweet and dim. 

















JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 


Up the beach the ocean slideth 
With a whisper of delight, 

And the moon in silence slideth 

Through the peaceful blue of night. 

Rippling o’er the poet’s shoulder 
Flows a maiden’s golden hair, 
Maiden lips, with love grown bolder, 
Kiss his moonlit forehead bare. 

“ Life is joy, and love is power, 

Death all fetters doth unbind, 


Strength and wisdom only flower 
When we toil for all our kind. 

Hope is truth, the future giveth 
More than present takes away, 
And the soul forever liveth 
Nearer God from day to da}\” 
Not a word the maiden muttered, 
Fullest hearts are slow to speak, 
But a withered rose-leaf fluttered 
Down upon the poet’s cheek. 


O 


THE HERITAGE. 



HE rich man’s son inherits lands, 

And piles of brick, and stone, and gold, 
And he inherits soft white hands, 

And tender flesh that fears the cold, 
Nor dares to wear a garment old ; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 


The rich man’s son inherits cares ; 

The bank may break, the factory burn, 
A breath may burst his bubble shares, 
And soft, white hands could hardly earn 
A living that would serve his turn ; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 


The rich man’s son inherits wants, 

His stomach craves for dainty fare; 
With sated heart he hears the pants 
Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare, 
And wearies in his easy chair; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 

What doth the poor man’s son inherit? 

Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, 

A hardy frame, a hardier spirit; 

King of two hands, he does his part 
In every useful toil and art; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

A king might wish to hold in fee. 

What doth the poor man’s son inherit ? 

Wishes o’erjoy’d with humble things, 

A rank adjudged by toil-worn merit, 


Content that from employment springs, 
A heart that in his labor sings; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

A king might wish to hold in fee. 

What doth the poor man’s son inherit? 

A patience learn’d of being poor, 
Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it, 

A fellow-feeling that is sure 
To make the outcast bless his door; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

A king might wish to hold in fee. 

0 rich man’s son ! there is a toil, 

That with all others level stands; 

Large charity doth never soil, 

But only whiten, soft, white hands,— 
This is the best crop from thy lands; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

Worth being rich to hold in fee. 

0 poor man’s son ! scorn not thy state; 

There is worse weariness than thine, 

In merely being rich and great; 

Toil only gives the soul to shine, 

And makes rest fragrant and benign; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

Worth being poor to hold in fee. 

Both, heirs to some six feet of sod, 

Are equal in the earth at last; 

Both, children of the same dear God, 
Prove title to your heirship vast 
By record of a well-fill’d past; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

Well worth a life to hold in fee. 









106 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 


ACT FOR TRUTH. 



HE busy world shoves angrily aside 

The man who stands with arms akimbo set, 
Until occasion tells him what to do ; 

And he who waits to have his task mark’d 


out 

Shall die and leave his errand unfulfill’d. 

Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds; 
Reason and Government, like two broad seas, 
Yearn for each other with outstretched arms 


Across this narrow isthmus of the throne, 

And roll their white surf higher every day. 

One age moves onward, and the next builds up 
Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood 
The rude log huts of those who tamed the wild, 
Rearing from out the forests they had fell d 
The goodly framework of a fairer state; 

The builder’s trowel and the settler’s axe 
Are seldom wielded by the selfsame hand; 

Ours is the harder task, yet not the less 
Shall we receive the blessing for our toil 
From the choice spirits of the after-time. 

The field lies wide before us, where to reap 
The easy harvest of a deathless name, 

Though with no better sickles than our swords. 

My soul is not a palace of the past, 

Where outworn creeds, like Rome’s gray senate, 
quake, 

Hearing afar the Vandal’s trumpet hoarse, 

That shakes old systems with a thunder-fit. 

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change ; 

Then let it come : I have no dread of what 


Is call’d for by the instinct of mankind ; 

Nor think I that God’s world will fall apart 
Because we tear a parchment more or less. 

Truth is eternal, but her effiuence. 

With endless change, is fitted to the hour : 

Her mirror is turn'd forward, to reflect 
The promise of the future, not the past. 

He who would win the name of truly great 
Must understand his own age and the next, 

And make the present ready to fulfil 
Its prophecy, and with the future merge 
Gently and peacefully, as wave with wave. 

The future works out great men’s destinies ; 

The jjresent is enough for common souls, 

Who, never looking forward, are indeed 
Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age 
Are petrified forever: better those 
Who lead the blind old giant by the hand 
From out the pathless desert where he gropes, 
And set him onward in his darksome way. 

I do not fear to follow out the truth, 

Albeit along the precipice’s edge. 

Let us speak plain : there is more force in names 
Than most men dream of; and a lie may keep 
Its throne a whole age longer if it skulk 
Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name. 

Let us all call tyrants tyrants , and maintain 
That only freedom comes by grace of God, 

And all that comes not by His grace must fall; 
For men in earnest have no time to waste 
In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth. 


-•O* * 


THE FIRST SNOW-FALL. 


HE snow had begun in the gloaming, 
And busily all the night 
Had been heaping field and highway 

With a silence deep and white. 

Every pine and fir and hemlock 
Wore ermine too dear for an earl, 

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree 
Was ridged inch deep with pearl. 

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara 
Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow, 

The stiff rails were softened to swan’s down, 
And still fluttered down the snow. 

• 

I stood and watched by the window 
The noiseless work of the sky, 

And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, 

Like brown leaves whirling by. 


I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 
Where a little headstone stood; 

How the flakes were folding it gently, 

As did robins the babes in the wood. 

Up spoke our own little Mabel, 

Saying, “ Father, who makes it snow?” 

And I told of the good All-father 
Who cares for us here below. 

Again I looked at the snow-fall 
And thought of the leaden sky 

That arched o'er our first great sorrow, 
When that mound was heaped so high. 

I remembered the gradual patience 
That fell from that cloud like snow, 

Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
The scar of our deep-plunged woe. 





















JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 


107 


And again to the child I whispered, 
“The snow that husheth all, 
Darling, the merciful Father 
Alone can make it fall!” 


Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her; 

And she, kissing back, could not know 
That my kiss was given to her sister, 

Folded close under deepening snow. 


FOURTH OF JULY ODE. 


i. 

UR fathers fought for liberty. 

They struggled long and well, 
History of their deeds can tell— 
But did they leave us free ? 

ii. 

Are we free from vanity, 

Free from pride, and free from self, 
Free from love of power and pelf, 
From everything that’s beggarly ? 

ill. 

Are we free from stubborn will, 

From low hate and malice small, 

From opinion’s tyrant thrall ? 

Are none of us our own slaves still ? 


IV. 

Are we free to speak our thought, 
To be happy, and be poor, 

Free to enter Heaven’s door, 

To live and labor as we ought ? 

v. 

Are we then made free at last 
From the fear of what men say, 
Free to reverence To-day, 

Free from the slavery of the Past? 

VI. 

Our fathers fought for liberty, 

They struggled long and well, 
History of their deeds can tell— 
But ourselves must set us free. 



THE DANDELION. 


EAR common flower, that grow’st beside the 
way, 

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 
First pledge of blithesome May, 

Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, 
High-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they 
An Eldorado in the grass have found, 

Which not the rich earth’s ample round 
May match in wealth—thou art more dear to me 
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 

Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow 
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 

Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
Of age, to rob the lover’s heart of ease; 

’Tis the Spring’s largess, which she scatters now 
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 

Though most hearts never understand 

o 

To take it at God’s value, but pass by 
The offer’d wealth with unrewarded eye. 



Then think I of deep shadows on the grass— 

Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze. 

Where, as the breezes pass, 

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways— 

Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 

Or whiten in the wind—of waters blue 

That from the distance sparkle through 
Some woodland gap—and of a skv above, 

Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. 

My childhood’s earliest thoughts are link’d with 
thee; 

The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song, 

Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 

And I, secure in childish piety, 

Listen’d as if I heard an angel sing 

With news from heaven, which he did bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears, 

When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. 


Thou art my trophies and mine Italy; 

To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; 

The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time; 

Not in mid June the golden-cuirass’d bee 
Feels a more summer-like, warm ravishment 
In the white lily’s breezy tint, 

His conquer’d Sybaris, than I, when first 
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 


How like a prodigal doth Nature seem. 

When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! 

Thou teachest me to deem 
More sacredly of every human heart, 

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, 
Did we but pay the love we owe, 

And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look 
On all these living pages of God’s book. 



















108 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 


THE ALPINE SHEEP. 


It is proper, in connection with the writings of Lowell, to insert the following poem bv his wife, Maria 
White Lowell, a singularly accomplished and beautiful woman, born July 8, 1821, married to the poet 
Lowell in 1844, died on the 22d of October 1853. In 1855 her husband had a volume of her poetry 
privately printed, the character of which may be judged from the following touching lines addressed to a 
friend after the loss of a child. 


HEN on my ear your loss was knell’d, 

And tender sympathy upburst, 

A little spring from memory well’d, 

Which once had quench’d my bitter 
thirst, 

And I was fain to bear to you 
A portion of its mild relief, 

That it might be a healing dew, 

To steal some fever from your grief. 

After our child’s untroubled breath 
Up to the Father took its way, 

And on our home the shade of Death 
Like a long twilight haunting lay, 

And friends came round, with us to weep 
Her little spirit’s swift remove, 

The story of the Alpine sheep 
Was told to us by one we love. 

They, in the valley’s sheltering care, 

Soon crop the meadow’s tender prime, 

And when the sod grows brown and bare, 

The shepherd strives to make them climb 

To airy shelves of pasture green, 

That hang along the mountain’s side, 

Where grass and flowers together lean, 

And down through mists the sunbeams slide. 



But naught can tempt the timid things 
The steep and rugged path to try, 

Though sweet the shepherds calls and sings, 
And sear d below the pastures lie, 

Till in his arms his lambs he takes, 

Along the dizzy verge to go : 

Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks, 

They follow on o’er rock and snow. 

And in these pastures, lifted fair, 

More dewy-soft than lowland mead, 

The shepherd drops his tender care, 

And sheep and lambs together feed. 

This parable, by Nature breathed, 

Blew on me as the south wind free 

O’er frozen brooks that flow unsheathed 
From icy thraldom to the sea. 

A blissful vision through the night 
Would all my happy senses sway 

Of the Good Shepherd on the height, 

Or climbing up the starry way, 

Holding our little lamb asleep, 

While, like the murmur of the sea, 

Sounded that voice along the deep, 

Saying, “ Arise and follow me.” 









































































































































BAYARD TAYLOR. 


RENOWNED POET, TRAVELER AND JOURNALIST. 


HE subject of this sketch begun life as a farmer boy. He was born 
in Chester county, Pennsylvania, January 11th, 1825. After a few 
years study in country schools he was apprenticed to a West Chester 
printer, with whom lie remained until he learned that trade. In his 
boyhood he wrote verses, and before he was twenty years of age 
published his first book entitled, “Ximena and other Poems.” 
Through this book he formed the acquaintance of Dr. Griswold, editor of “ Graham’s 
Magazine,” Philadelphia, who gave him letters of recommendation to New York, 
where he received encouragement from N. P. Willis and Horace Greeley, the latter 
agreeing to publish his letters from abroad in the event of his making a journey, 
contemplated, to the old world. 

Thus encouraged lie set out to make a tour of Europe, having less than one hun¬ 
dred and fifty dollars to defray expenses. He was absent two years, during which 
time he traveled over Europe on foot, supporting himself entirely by stopping now 
and then in Germany to work at the printer’s trade and by his literary correspon¬ 
dence, for which he received only $500.00. He was fully repaid for this hardship, 
however, by the proceeds of his book (which he published on his return in 1846), 
“ Views Afoot, or Europe as Seen with Knapsack and Staff.” This was regarded 
as one of the most delightful books of travel that had appeared up to that time, and 
six editions of it were sold within one year. It is still one of the most popular of 
the series of eleven books of travel written during the course of his life. In 1848 
he further immortalized this journey and added to his fame by publishing “Rhymes 
of Travel,” a volume of verse. 

Taylor was an insatiable nomad, visiting in his travels the remotest regions. “His 
wandering feet pressed the soil of all the continents, and his observing eyes saw the 
strange and beautiful things of the world from the equator to the frozen North and 
South;” and wherever he went the world saw through his eyes and heard through 
his ears the things he saw and heard. Europe, India, Japan, Central Africa, the 
Soudan, Egypt, Palestine, Iceland and California contributed their quota to the 
ready pen of this incessant traveler and rapid worker. He was a man of buoyant 
nature with an eager appetite for new experiences, a remarkable memory, and a 
talent for learning languages. His poetry is full of glow and picturesqueness, in 
style suggestive of both Tennyson and Shelly. His famous “Bedouin Song” is 
strongly imitative of Shelly’s “Lines to an Indian Air.” He was an admirable 

109 








































110 


BAYARD TAYLOR 


parodist and translator. His translation of “Faust” so closely adheres to Goethe’s 
original metre that it is considered one of the proudest accomplishments in Ameri¬ 
can letters. Taylor is generally considered first among our poets succeeding the 
generation of Poe, Longfellow and Lowell. 

The novels of the traveler, of which he wrote only four, the scenes being laid in 
Pennsylvania and New York, possess the same eloquent profusion manifest in his 
verse, and give the reader the impression of having been written with the ease and 
dash which characterize his stories of travel. In fact, his busy life was too much 
hurried to allow the spending of much time on anything. His literary life occupied 
only thirty-four years and in that time he wrote thirty-seven volumes. He entered 
almost every department of literature and always displayed high literary ability. 
Besides his volumes of travel and the four novels referred to he was a constant 
newspaper correspondent, and then came the greatest labor of all, poetry. This he 
regarded as his realm, and it was his hope of fame. Voluminous as were the works 
of travel and fiction and herculean the efforts necessary to do the prose writing he 
turned off, it was, after all, but the antechamber to his real labors. It was to poetry 
that he devoted most thought and most time. 

In 1877 Bayard Taylor was appointed minister to Berlin by President Hayes, 
and died December 19tli, 1878, while serving his country in that capacity. 


THE BISON-TRACK. 


S TRIKE the tent! the sun has risen; not a 
cloud has ribb’d the dawn, 

And the frosted prairie brightens to the 
westward, far and wan ; 

Prime afresh the trusty rifle—sharpen well the hunt¬ 
ing-spear— 

For the frozen sod is trembling, and a noise of hoofs 
I hear! 

Fiercely stamp the tether’d horses, as they snuff the 
morning’s fire. 

And their flashing heads are tossing, with a neigh of 
keen desire; 

Strike the tent—the saddles wait us ! let the bridle- 
reins be slack, 

For the prairie’s distant thunder has betray’d the 
bison’s track ! 

See ! a dusky line approaches ; hark ! the onward- 
surging roar, 

Like the din of wintry breakers on a sounding wall 
of shore ! 

Dust and sand behind them whirling, snort the fore¬ 
most of the van, 

And the stubborn horns are striking, through' the 
crowded caravan. 

Now the storm is down upon us—let the madden’d 

horses go! 

he shall ride the living whirlwind, though a hundred 
leagues it blow ! 


Though the surgy manes should thicken, and the red 
eyes’ angry glare 

Lighten round us as we gallop through the sand and 
rushing air ! 

Myriad hoofs will scar the prairie, in our wild, resist¬ 
less race, 

And a sound, like mighty waters, thunder down the 
desert space : 

Yet the rein may not be tighten'd, nor the rider's eye 
look back— 

Death to him whose speed should slacken on the 
madden’d bison’s track ! 

Now the trampling herds are threaded, and the chase 
is close and warm 

For the giant bull that gallops in the edges of the 
storm : 

Hurl your lassoes swift and fearless—swing your rifles 
as we run ! 

Ha ! the dust is red behind him ; shout, mv brothers, 
he is won ! 

Look not on him as he staggers—’tis the last shot he 
will need ; 

More shall fall, among his fellows, ere we run the bold 
stampede— 

Ere we stem the swarthy breakers—while the wolves, 
a hungry pack, 

Howl around each grim-eyed carcass, on the bloody 
bison-track ! 








***•«/-. 


BAYARD TAYLOR. 


Ill 


THE SONG OF THE CAMP. 


IVE us a song! ” the soldiers cried, 

The outer trenches guarding, 

When the heated guns of the camps allied 
Grew weary of bombarding. 

The dark Redan, in silent scoff, 

Lay, grim and threatening, under; 

And the tawny mound of the Malakoff 
No longer belched its thunder. 

There was a pause. A guardsman said, 

“ We storm the forts to-morrow, 

Sing while we may, another day 
Will bring enough of sorrow.” 

There lay along the battery’s side, 

Below the smoking cannon, 

Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde, 

And from the banks of shannon. 

They sang of love, and not of fame; 

Forgot was Britain's glory ; 

Each heart recalled a different name 
But all sang “Annie Lawrie.” 

Voice after voice caught up the song, 

Until its tender passion 


Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,— 
Their battle-eve confession. 

Dear girl, her name he dared not speak, 
But, as the song grew louder, 

Something on the soldier’s cheek 
Washed off the stains of powder. 

Beyond the darkening ocean burned 
The bloody sunset’s embers, 

While the Crimean valleys learned 
How English love remembers. 

And once again a fire of hell 
Rained on the Russian quarters, 

With scream of shot, and burst of shell, 
And bellowing of the mortars ! 

And Irish Nora’s eyes are dim 
For a singer, dumb and gory; 

And English Mary mourns for him 
Who sang of “ Annie Lawrie.” 

Sleep, soldier! still in honored rest 
Your truth and valor wearing; 

The bravest are the tenderest,— 

The loving are the daring. 



-»o» ■ ■ 

BEDOUIN SONG. 


ROM the Desert I come to thee 
On a stallion shod with fire; 

And the winds are left behind 
In the speed of my desire. 

Under thy window I stand, 

And the midnight hears my cry: 

I love thee, I love but thee, 

With a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold , 

And the stars are old , 

And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book unfold! 

Look from thy window and see 
My passion and my pain ; 

I lie on the sands below, 

And I faint in thy disdain. 

Let the night-winds touch thy brow 
With the heat of my burning sigh, 


And melt thee to. hear the vow 
Of a love that shall not die 

Till the sun grows cold , 

And the stars are old , 

And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book unfold! 

My steps are nightly driven, 

By the fever in my breast, 

To hear from thy lattice breathed 
The word that shall give me rest. 

Open the door of thy heart, 

And open thy chamber door, 

And my kisses shall teach thy lips 
The love that shall fade no more 
Till the sun grows cold , 

And the stars are old , 

And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book unfold,! 

+ 0 + - 



THE ARAB TO THE PALM. 



EXT to thee, 0 fair gazelle, 

0 Beddowee girl, beloved so well; 

Next to the fearless Nedjidee, 


Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee; 

Next to ye both I love the Palm, 

With his leaves of beauty, his fruit of balm; 





















112 


BAYARD TAYLOR. 


Next to ye both I love the Tree 
Whose fluttering shadow wraps us three 
With 'love, and silence, and mystery ! 

Our tribe is many, our poets vie 
With any under the Arab sky ; 

Yet none can sing of the Palm but I. 

The marble minarets that begem 

Cairo’s citadel-diadem 

Are not so light as his slender stem. 

He lifts his leaves in the sunbeam's glance 
As the Almelis lift their arms in dance— 

A slumberous motion, a passionate sign, 

That works in the cells of the blood like wine. 

Full of passion and sorrow is he, 

Dreaming where the beloved may be. 

And when the warm south-winds arise, 

He breathes his longing in fervid sighs— 

Quickening odors, kisses of balm, 

That drop in the lap of his chosen palm. 


The sun may flame and the sands may stir, 
But the breath of his passion reaches her. 

0 Tree of Love, by that love of thine, 

Teach me how I shall soften mine ! 

Give me the secret of the sun, 

Whereby the wooed is ever won ! 

If I were a King, 0 stately Tree, 

A likeness, glorious as might be, 

In the court of my palace I'd build for thee ! 

With a shaft of silver, burnished bright, 

And leaves of beryl and malachite. 

With spikes of golden bloom a-blaze, 

And fruits of topaz and chrysoprase : 

And there the poets, in thy praise, 

Should night and morning frame new lays— 

New measures sung to tunes divine ; 

But none, 0 Palm, should equal mine ! 




LIFE ON THE NILE. 


-“ The life thou seek’st 

Thou’lt find beside the eternal Nile.” 

— Moore's Alciphron. 

E Nile is the Paradise of travel. I thought 
I had already fathomed all the depths of 
enjoyment which the traveler’s restless life 
could reach—enjoyment more varied and exciting, 
but far less serene and enduring, than that of a quiet 
home ; but here I have reached a fountain too pure 
and powerful to be exhausted. I never before ex¬ 
perienced such a thorough deliverance from all the 
petty annoyances of travel in other lands, such per¬ 
fect contentment of spirit, such entire abandonment 
to the best influences of nature. Every day opens 
with & jubilate, and closes with a thanksgiving. If 
such a balm and blessing as this life has been to me, 
thus far, can be felt twice in one’s existence, there 
must be another Nile somewhere in the world. 

Other travelers undoubtedly make other experi¬ 
ences and take away other impressions. I can even 

conceive circumstances which wowld almost destrov 

«/ 

the pleasure of the journey. The same exquisitely 
sensitive temperament, which in our case has not 


been disturbed by a single untoward incident, might 
easily be kept in a state of constant derangement by 
an unsympathetic companion, a cheating dragoman, 
or a fractious crew. There are also many trifling 
desaprmens, inseparable from life in Egypt, which 
some would consider a source of annoyance; but, as 
we find fewer than w T e were prepared to meet, we are 
not troubled thereby. * * * 

Our manner of life is simple, and might even be 
called monotonous ; but we have never found the 
greatest variety of landscape and incident so thor¬ 
oughly enjoyable. The scenery of the Nile, thus far, 
scarcely changes from day to day, in its forms and 
colors, but only in their disposition with regard to 
each other. The shores are either palm-groves, fields 
of cane and dourra, young wheat, or patches of bare 
sand blown out from the desert. The villages are all 
the same agglomerations of mud walls, the tombs of 
the Moslem saints are the same white ovens, and every 
individual camel and buffalo resembles its neighbor in 
picturesque ugliness. The Arabian and Libyan 
Mountains, now sweeping so far into the foreground 

















BAYARD TAYLOR. 


113 


that their yellow cliffs overhang the Nile, now reced¬ 
ing into the violet haze of the horizon, exhibit little 
difference of height, hue, or geological formation. 
Every new scene is the turn of a kaleidoscope, in 
which the same objects are grouped in other relations, 
yet always characterized by the most perfect harmony. 
These slight yet ever-renewing changes are to us a 
source of endless delight. Either from the pure 
atmosphere, the healthy life we lead, or the accordant 
tone of our spirits, we find ourselves unusually sensi¬ 
tive to all the slightest touches, the most minute rays, 
of that grace and harmony which bathes every land¬ 
scape in cloudless sunshine. The various groupings 
of the palms, the shifting of the blue evening shadows 
on the rose-hued mountain-walls, the green of the 
wheat and sugar-cane, the windings of the great 
river, the alternations of wind and calm,—each of 
these is enough to content us, and to give every day 

a different charm from that which went before. We 

* 

meet contrary winds, calms, and sand-banks, without 
losing our patience ; and even our excitement in the 
swiftness and grace with which our vessel scuds be¬ 
fore the north wind, is mingled with a regret that our 

8 


journey is drawing so much the more swiftly to its 
close. A portion of the old Egyptian repose seems 
to be infused into our natures; and lately, when I 
saw my face in a mirror, I thought I perceived in its 
features something of the patience and resignation of 
the sphinx. * * * 

My friend, the Howadji, in whose “ Nile Notes ” 
the Egyptian atmosphere is so perfectly reproduced, 
says that “ conscience falls asleep on the Nile.” If 
by this he means that artificial quality which bigots 
and sectarians call conscience, I quite agree with him, 
and do not blame the Nile for its soporific powers. 
But that simple faculty of the soul, native to all men, 
which acts best when it acts unconsciously, and leads 
our passions and desires into right paths without 
seeming to lead them, is vastly strengthened by this 
quiet and healthy life. There is a cathedral-like so¬ 
lemnity in the air of Egypt; one feels the presence 
of the altar, and is a better man without his will. To 
those rendered misanthropic by disappointed ambition, 
mistrustful by betrayed confidence, despairing by un- 
assuageable sorrow, let me repeat the motto which 
heads this chapter. 













NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 

POET, AND THE MOST NOTED MAGAZINIST OF HIS DAY. 

is perhaps unfortunate for Willis that he was such a devotee of 
fashion and form as to attain a reputation for “foppishness.” Al¬ 
most all men of genius have some habit or besetting sin which 
renders them personally more or less unpopular and sometimes even 
odious to the public eye. The noted poet, Coleridge, of England, 
had the opium habit, and many people who know this cannot divest 
their minds of a certain loathing for the man when they come to read his poems. 
The drink habit of Edgar Allen Poe and other unfortunate facts in his personal 
life have created a popular prejudice also against this brilliant but erratic genius. 
A like prejudice exists against the poet naturalist, Thoreau, whose isolation from 
men and attempt to live on a mere pittance has prejudiced many minds against the 
reading of his profitable productions; for it has been said that no man ever lived 
closer to the heart of nature than did this friend of the birds, the insects, animals, 
flowers, mountains and rivers. It is doubtful if any man in literature has lived a 
purer life or possessed in his sphere a more exalted genius, given us so close an 
insight into nature, or awakened a more enthusiastic study of the subject. 

Therefore let us look with a deserving charity upon the personal pride, or “fop¬ 
pishness,” if we may call it such, of the poet, Willis. He certainly deserves more 
general reputation as a poet than modern critics are disposed to accord him. Many 
of his pieces are of an extraordinary grade of merit, signifying a most analytical 
and poetic mind, and evincing a marked talent and facility for versification and 
prose writing executed in a style of peculiar grace and beauty. 

Nathaniel Parker Willis was born in Portland, January 20th 1806. The family 
traces its ancestry back to the fifteenth century in England, and for more than two 
hundred years prior to his birth both his paternal and maternal ancestors had lived 
in New England. The poet’s father was for several years publisher and editor 
of the Easton “Argus,” a political paper established at Portland, Maine, in 1803. 
He founded a religious paper, the Boston “Recorder,” in 1816, which he conducted 
for twenty years, and he was also the founder of the first child’s newspaper in the 
world, which is the now famous and widely circulated “ Youth’s Companion.” 
Willis was six years old when his father removed to Boston. He had the best edu¬ 
cational facilities from private tutors and select schools, completing his course at 
Yale College, where he graduated in 1827. While in college he published several 
religious poems uuter the signature of “Roy,” gaining in one instance a prize of 

114 



























NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 


115 


fifty dollars for the best poem. After his graduation Willis became the editor of a 
series of volumes published by S. G. Goodrich, entitled “ The Legendary.” lie next 
established the “American Monthly Magazine” which he merged after two years into 
the New Y ork “ Mirror,” to which paper his “ Pencilings by the Way ” were contri¬ 
buted during a four year’s tour in Europe, on which journey lie was attached to 
the American legation at Paris, and with a diplomatic passport visited the various 
capitals of Europe and the East. During this sojourn, in 1835, he married Miss 
Mary Stace, daughter of a Waterloo officer. 

After his marriage Mr. AVillis returned to this country with his wife and estab¬ 
lished a home on the Susquehanna River, which he called Glenmary, the latter 
part of the word being in honor of his wife. Here he hoped to spend the remainder 
of his days quietly in such literary work as pleased his taste, but the resources from 
which his support came were swept away in a financial disaster and he was forced to 
return to active life. He disposed of his country seat, removed to New York, and 
in connection with Dr. Porter established the “Corsair,” a weekly journal. In the 
interest of this publication Mr. Willis made a second journey to England, engaging 
Mr. Thackeray and other well-known writers as contributors. While absent he pub¬ 
lished a miscellany of his magazine stories with the title of “Loiterings of Travel ” 
and also two of his plays. On returning to New York he found that Dr. Porter 
had suddenly abandoned their project in discouragement and he formed a new con¬ 
nection with the “Evening Mirror.” Soon after this the death of his wife occurred, 
his own health failed, and he went abroad determining to spend his life in 
Germany. On reaching Berlin he was attached to the American legation, but went 
away on a leave of absence to place his daughter in school in England. In the 
meantime his health grew so precarious that instead of returning to Berlin he sailed 
for America, where he spent the remainder of his life in contributing to various 
magazines. He established a home, “ Idlewild,” in the highlands of the Hudson 
beyond West Point, where he died in 1867 on his sixty-first birthday. 

Throughout his life Mr. AVillis was an untiring worker and his days were no 
doubt ended much earlier than if he had taken proper rest. “The poetry of Air. 
Willis,” says Duyckinck, “ is musical and original. His religious poems belong to a 
class of composition which critics might object to did not experience show them to 
be pleasing and profitable interpreters to many minds. The versification of these 
poems is of remarkable smoothness. Indeed they have gained the author’s reputa¬ 
tion where his nicer poems would have failed to be appreciated. On the other hand 
his novel in rhyme, ‘ Lady Jane,’ is one of the very choicest of the numerous 
poems cast in the model of ‘Don Juan;’ while his dramas are delicate creations of 
sentiment and passion with a relic of the old poetic Elizabethan stage.” As a 
traveler Air. AVillis has no superior in representing the humors and experiences of 
the world. He is sympathetic, witty, observant, and at the same time inventive. 
That his labors were pursued through broken health with unremitting diligence 
is another claim to consideration which the public should be prompt to acknowledge. 


116 


NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 


DAVID’S LAMENT FOR ABSALOM. 


HE waters slept. Night’s silvery veil hung 

On Jordan’s bosom, and the eddies curled 

Their glassy rings beneath it, like the still, 
Unbroken beating of the sleeper’s pulse. 

The reeds bent down the stream : the willow leaves 
With a soft cheek upon the lulling tide, 

Forgot the lifting winds; and the long stems 
Whose flowers the water, like a gentle nurse 
Bears on its bosom, quietly gave way, 

And leaned, in graceful attitude, to rest. 

How strikingly the course of nature tells 
By its light heed of human suffering, 

That it was fashioned for a happier world. 

King David’s limbs were weary. He had fled 
From far Jerusalem : and now he stood 
With his faint people, for a little space, 

Upon the shore of Jordan. The light wind 
Of morn was stirring, and he bared his brow, 

To its refreshing breath ; for he had worn 
The mourner’s covering, and had not felt 
That he could see his people until now. 

They gathered round him on the fresh green bank 
And spoke their kindly words: and as the sun 
Rose up in heaven, he knelt among them there, 

And bowed his head upon his hands to pray. 

Oh ! when the heart is full,—when bitter thoughts 
Come crowding thickly up for utterance, 

And the poor common words of courtesy, 

Are such a very mockery—how much 
The bursting heart may pour itself in prayer! 

He prayed for Israel : and his voice went up 
Strongly and fervently. He prayed for those, 

Whose love had been his shield: and his deep tones 
Grew tremulous. But, oh ! for Absalom,— 

For his estranged, misguided Absalom,— 

The proud bright being who had burst away 

In all his princely beauty, to defy 

The heart that cherished him—for him he poured 

In agony that would not be controlled 

Strong supplication, and forgave him there, 

Before his God, for his deep sinfulness. 

* * >{C 

The pall was settled. He who slept beneath 
Was straightened for the grave : and as the folds 
Sank to the still proportions, they betrayed 
The matchless symmetry of Absalom. 


With trailing through Jerusalem, was laid, 
Reversed, beside him ; and the jeweled hilt 
Whose diamonds lit the passage of his blade, 
Rested like mockery on his covered brow. 

The soldiers of the king trod to and fro, 

Clad in the garb of battle ; and their chief, 

The mighty Joab, stood beside the bier, 

And gazed upon the dark pall steadfastly, 

As if he feared the slumberer might stir. 

A slow step startled him. He grasped his blade 
As if a trumpet rang: but the bent form 
Of David entered, and he gave command 
In a low tone to his few followers, 

And left him with his dead. The King stood still 

o 

Till the last echo died: then, throwing off 
The sackcloth from his brow, and laying back 
r J’he pall from the still features of his child, 

He bow r ed his head upon him, and broke forth 
In the resistless eloquence of woe: 

“ Alas ! my noble boy ! that thou should’st die,— 
Thou who wert made so beautifully fair! 

That death should settle in thy glorious eye, 

And leave his stillness in this clustering hair— 
How could he mark thee for the silent tomb; 

My proud boy, Absalom ! 

“ Cold is thy brow, my son ! and I am chill 
As to my bosom I have tried to press thee— 

How was I wont to feel my pulses thrill. 

Like a rich harp string, yearning to caress thee— 
And hear thy sweet ‘ My father ,’ from these dumb 
And cold lips, Absalom ! 

“ The grave hath won thee. I shall hear the gush 
Of music, and the voices of the young: 

And life will pass me in the mantling blush, 

And the dark tresses to the soft winds flung,— 
But thou no more with thy sweet voice shall come 
To meet me, Absalom ! 

“ And, oh ! w r hen I am stricken, and my heart 
Like a bruised reed, is waiting to be broken, 

How will its love for thee, as I depart, 

Yearn for thine ear to drink its last deep token! 

It were so sweet, amid death’s gathering gloom, 

To see thee, Absalom ! 


His hair was yet unshorn, and silken curls 
W ere floating round the tassels as they swayed 
To the admitted air, as glossy now 
As when in hours of gentle dalliance, bathing 
The snowy fingers of Judea’s girls. 

His helm was at his feet: his banner soiled 


“ And now farewell. ’Tis hard to give thee up, 

V ith death so like a gentle slumber on thee; 
And thy dark sin—oh ! I could drink the cup 
If from this woe its bitterness had won thee. 
May God have called thee, like a wanderer, home, 
My lost boy, Absalom !” 










NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 


117 


He covered up his face, and bowed himself 
A moment on his child ; then giving him 
A look of melting tenderness, he clasped 
His hands convulsively, as if in prayer: 


And as if strength were given him of God, 
He ruse up calmly and composed the pall 
Firmly and decently,—and left him there, 
As if his rest had been a breathing sleep. 


-*<>♦- 


THE DYING ALCHEMIST. 


HE night-wind with a desolate moan swept by, 
And the old shutters of the turret swung 
Creaking upon their hinges; and the moon, 
As the torn edges of the clouds flew past, 
Struggled aslant the stained and broken panes 
So dimly, that the watchful eye of death 
Scarcely was conscious when it went and came. 

The fire beneath his crucible was low, 

Yet still it burned: and ever, as his thoughts 
Grew insupportable, he raised himself 
Upon his wasted arm, and stirred the coals 
With difficult energy; and when the rod 
Fell from his nerveless fingers, and his eye 
Felt faint within its socket, he shrank back 
Upon his pallet, and, with unclosed lips, 

Muttered a curse on death ! 

The silent room, 

From its dim corners, mockingly gave back 
His rattling breath ; the humming in the fire 
Had the distinctness of a knell; and when 
Duly the antique horologe beat one. 

He drew a phial from beneath his head, 

And drank. And instantly his lips compressed, 

And, with a shudder in his skeleton frame, 

He rose with supernatural strength, and sat 
Upright, and communed with himself: 

“ I did not think to die 
Till I had finished what I had to do; 

I thought to pierce tlf eternal secret through 
With this my mortal eye; 

I felt,—Oh, God ! it seemeth even now— 

This cannot be the death-dew on my brow; 

Grant me another year, 

God of my spirit!—but a day,—to win 
Something to satisfy this thirst within ! 

I would know something here ! 

Break for me but one seal that is unbroken ! 

Speak for me but one word that is unspoken ! 

“ Vain,—vain.—my brain is turning 
With a swift dizziness, and my heart grows sick, 

And these hot temple-throbs come fast and thick, 
And I am freezing,—burning,— 

Dying ! Oh, God ! if I might only live ! 

My phial-Ha ! it thrills me,—I revive. 


“ Aye,—were not man to die, 

He were too mighty for this narrow sphere ! 

Had he but time to brood on knowledge here,— 
Could he but train his eye,— 

Might he but wait the mystic word and hour,— 

Only his Maker would transcend his power 1 

“ This were indeed to feel 
The soul-thirst slacken at the living stream,— 

To live, Oh, God ! that life is but a dream ! 

And death-Aha ! I reel,— 

Dim,—dim,—I faint, darkness comes o’er my eye.— 
Cover me ! save me !-God of heaven ! I die! ” 

'Twas morning, and the old man lay alone. 

No friend had closed his eyelids, and his lips, 

Open and ashy pale, th’ expression wore 
Of his death struggle. His long silvery hair 
Lay on his hollow temples, thin and wild, 

His frame was wasted, and his features wan 
And haggard as with want, and in his palm 
His nails were driven deep, as if the throe 
Of the last agony had wrung him sore. 

The storm was raging still. The shutter swung, 
Creaking as harshly in the fitful wind, 

And all without went on.—as aye it will, 

Sunshine or tempest, reckless that a heart 
Is breaking, or has broken, in its change. 

The fire beneath the crucible was out. 

The vessels of his mystic art lay round, 

Useless and cold as the ambitious hand 
That fashioned them, and the small rod, 

Familiar to his touch for threescore years, 

Lay on th’ alembic’s rim, as if it still 
Might vex the elements at its master’s will. 

And thus had passed from its unequal frame 
A soul of fire,—a sun-bent eagle stricken, 

From his high soaring, down,—an instrument 
Broken with its own compass. Oh, how poor 
Seems the rich gift of genius, when it lies, 

Like the adventurous bird that hath out flown 
His strength upon the sea, ambition wrecked,— 

A thing the thrush might pity, as she sits 
Brooding in quiet on her lowly nest. 

















118 


NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 


TIIE BELFRY PIGEON. 


N the cross-beam under the Old South bell 
The nest of a pigeon is builded well, 

In summer and winter that bird is there, 
Out and in with the morning air. 

I love to see him track the street, 

With his wary eye and active feet; 

And I often watch him as he springs, 

Circling the steeple with easy wings, 

Till across the dial his shade has passed, 

And the belfry edge is gained at last. 

’Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note, 

And the trembling throb in its mottled throat; 
There’s a human look in its swelling breast. 

And the gentle curve of its lowly crest; 

And I often stop with the fear I feel, 

He runs so close to the rapid wheel. 

Whatever is rung on that noisy bell, 

Chime of the hour or funeral knell, 

The dove in the belfry must hear it well. 

When the tongue swings out to the midnight moon, 
When the sexton cheerily rings for noon, 

When the clock strikes clear at morning light, 

When the child is waked with “ nine at night,” 
When the chimes play soft in the Sabbath air, 
Filling the spirit with tones of prayer, 

Whatever tale in the bell is heard. 

He broods on his folded feet, unstirred, 


Or, rising half in his rounded nest, 

He takes the time to smooth his breast; 
Then drops again, with filmed eyes, 

And sleeps as the last vibration dies. 

Sweet bird ! I would that I could be 
A hermit in the crowd like thee! 

With wings to fly to wood and glen, 

Thy lot, like mine, is cast with men ; 

And daily, with unwilling feet, 

I tread, like thee, the crowded street; 

But, unlike me, when day is o’er, 

Thou canst dismiss the world, and soar; 

Or, at a half-felt wish for rest, 

Canst smooth the feathers on thy breast, 
And drop, forgetful, to thy nest. 

I would that in such wings of gold, 

I could my weary heart up-fold; 

I would I could look down unmoved, 
(Unloving as I am unloved,) 

And while the world throngs on beneath, 
Smooth down my cares, and calmly breathe 
And never sad with others’ sadness, 

And never glad with others’ gladness, 
Listen, unstirred, to knell or chime, 

And, lapped in quiet, bide my time. 



£31 4 * («)A 











RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

POET AND JOURNALIST. 


1TH no commanding antecedents to support him, Richard Henry Stod¬ 
dard has, step by step, fought his way to a position which is alike 
creditable to his indomitable energy and his genius. Stoddard was 
born July 2,1825, at Hingham, Mass. His father was a sea-captain, 
who, while the poet was yet in his early youth, sailed for Sweden. 
Tidings oi his vessel never came back,—this was in 1835. The 
mother removed, the same year, with her son to New York, where he attended 
the juiblic schools of the city. Necessity compelled the widow, as soon as his age 
permitted, to put young Stoddard to work, and he was placed in an iron foundry to 
learn this trade. “Here he worked for some years,” says one of his biographers, 
“dreaming in the intervals of his toil, and even then moulding his thoughts into the 
symmetry of verse while he moulded the moulten metal into shapes of grace.” At 
the same time he pursued a course of private reading and study, and began to 
write poems and sketches for his own pleasure. 

It was in 1847 that the earliest blossoms of his genius appeared in the “Union 
Magazine,” which gave evidence that his mind as well as his body was toiling. In 
1848 he issued a small volume of poems entitled, “Footjirints,” which contained 
some pieces of merit; but he afterwards suppressed the entire edition. About this 
time his health failed and, to recuperate, he gave up, temporarily, his mechanical 
vocation; but literature took such possession of him that he never returned to the 
foundry. 

In 1852 he issued his second volume entitled, “Poems,” and became a regular 
contributor to the magazines. In 1860 he was made literary editor of the “New 
York World,” which position he retained until 1870, and since 1880 he has held a 
similar position on the “New York Mail and Express.” He, also, from 1853 to 
1873 held a government position in the Custom House of New York. During this 
time Mr. Stoddard also edited a number of works with prefaces and introduc¬ 
tions by himself, among which may be mentioned the “Bric-a-Brac Series.” 
Prominent titles of the author’s own books are “Songs of Summer,” which appeared 
in 1856; “The King’s Bell,” a series of most delicate suggestive pictures, (1862); 
“Abraham Lincoln, A Horatian Ode,” (1865); “The Book of the East,” poems, 
(1871); a collective edition entitled, “Poems,” (1880), and “The Lion’s Cub,” 
poems, (1890). 

One of our most eminent literary critics declares: “Mr. Stoddard s mind is essen- 

119 



































120 


RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 


tially poetical. All liis works are stamped with earnestness. His style is character¬ 
ized by purity and grace of expression. He is a master of rythmical melody and 
his mode of treating a subject is sometimes exquisitely subtle. In his poems there is 
no rude writing. All is finished and highly glazed. The coloring is warm, the 
costumes harmonious, the grouping symmetrical. His poetry always possesses a 
spiritual meaning. Every sound and sight in nature is to him a symbol which 
strikes some spiritual chord. The trees that wave at his window, and the moon 
that silvers his roof are to him things that play an intimate part in his existence. 
Thus in all his poems will be found an echo from an internal to an external nature, 
the harmony resulting from the intimate union of both.” 

Mrs. Elizabeth Stoddard, the wife of the author, has shared heartily in the 
literary labors of her husband, assisting him in his compilations, and is, herself, 
author of numerous contributions to the magazines and a number of pleasing poems. 
She has also written several novels. 

A dinner was given to Mr. Stoddard by the Author’s Club at the Hotel Savoy on 
March 25tli, 1897, at which more than one hundred and fifty persons gathered to 
do honor to the venerable poet. Mr. E. C. Stedman, the poet, presided, and good 
talk abounded. It is impossible in this space to give any extended note of the ad¬ 
dresses. Letters of regret were received from many friends of Mr. Stoddard who 
w r ere unable to be present, including Bishop Potter, Professor Charles Eliot Norton, 
Dr. Andrew D. White, William Allen Butler, Donald G. Mitchell, James Whit¬ 
comb Biley and others. 

The admirable letter of Donald G. Mitchell (the famous Ik Marvel), closed in 
these words: 

“There is not one of you who has a truer relish for the charming ways in which 
that favorite poet can twist our good motlier-English into resonant shapes of verse. 
I pray you to tell him so, and that only the weakness of age—quickened by this 
wintry March—keeps me from putting in an “Adsum,” at the roll-call of your 
guests.” 

The “Hoosier Poet” sent these lines to represent him: 

0 princely poet! kingly heir 
Of gifts divinely sent— 

Your own—nor envy anywhere, 

Nor voice of discontent. 

Though, of ourselves, all poor are we, 

And frail and weak of wine, 

Your height is ours—your ecstasy, 

Your glory, where you sing. 

Most favored of the gods and great 
In gifts beyond our store, 

We covet not your rich estate, 

But prize our own the more. 

The gods give as but gods may do; 

We count our riches thus— , 

They gave their richest gifts to you, 

And then gave you to us. 

James Whitcomb Biley. 


RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 


121 


Mr. Stoddard responded to Mr. Miley and others in the poem quoted below, which 
shows the vigor of mind and spirit enjoyed by this venerable poet of three score 
years and ten and five, on whom the snows of three-quarters of a century have fallen 
so lightly that they seem but to have mellowed rather than weakened his powers. 


-♦o*- 


A CURTAIN CALL. 


SgsafENTLEHEX: If I have any right 
come before you here to-night 
i s conferred on me by you, 

And more for what I tried to do 
Than anything that I have done. 

A start, perhaps, a race not won! 

But ’tis not wholly lost, I see, 

For you, at least, believe in me. 
Comrades, nay, fellows, let me say, 

Since life at most is but a play, 

And we are players, one and all, 

And this is but a curtain call, 

If I were merely player here, 

And this assumption of his part, 

I might pretend to drop a tear, 

And lay my hand upon my heart 
And say I could not speak, because 
I felt so deeply your applause ! 

I cannot do this, if I would; 

I can but thank you, as I should, 

And take the honors you bestow— 

A largess, not a lawful claim ; 

My share thereof is small, I know, 

But from your hands to-night is fame— 
A precious crown in these pert days 
Of purchased or of self-made bays; 

You give it—I receive it, then, 

Though rather for your sake than mine. 
A long and honorable line 
Is yours—the Peerage of the Pen, 
Founded when this old world was young, 
And need was to preserve for men 


(Lost else) what had been said and sung, 
Tales our forgotten fathers told, 

Dimly remembered from of old, 

Sonorous canticles and prayers, 

Service of elder o-ods than theirs 

O 

Which they knew not ; the epic strain 
Wherein dead peoples lived again ! 

A long, unbroken line is ours; 

It has outlived whole lines of kings, 

Seen mighty empires rise and fall, 

And nations pass away like flowers— 

Ruin and darkness cover all ! 

Nothing withstands the stress and strain, 
The endless ebb and flow of things, 

The rush of Time’s resistless win^s! 
Nothing? One thing, and not in vain, 
One thing remains : Letters remain ! 

Your art and mine, yours more than mine, 
Good fellows of the lettered line, 

To whom I owe this Curtain Call, 

I thank you all, I greet you all. 

Noblesse oblige ! But while I may, 
Another word, my last, maybe : 

When this life-play of mine is ended, 

And the black curtain has descended, 
Think kindly as you can of me, 

And say, for you may truly say, 

“ This dead player, living, loved his part, 
And made it noble as he could, 

Not for his own poor personal good, 

But for the glory of his art! ” 


O 


HYMN TO THE BEAUTIFUL. 



Y heart is full of tenderness and tears, 

And tears are in mine eyes, I know not why; 
With all my grief, content to live for years, 
Or even this hour to die. 

My youth is gone, but that I heed not now ; 
My love is dead, or worse than dead 
can be; 


My friends drop off like blossoms from a 
bough, 

But nothing troubles me, 

Only the golden flush of sunset lies 
Within my heart like fire, like dew within 
my eyes! 

















122 


RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 


Spirit of Beauty ! whatsoe’er thou art, 

I see thy skirts afar, and feel thy power; 

It is thy presence fills this charmed hour, 

And fills my charmed heart; 

Nor mine alone, but myriads feel thee now, 

That know not what they feel, nor why they bow; 
Thou canst not be forgot, 

For all men worship thee, and know it not; 

Nor men alone, but babes with wondrous eyes, 
New-comers on the earth, and strangers from the skies! 

We hold the keys of Heaven within our hands, 

The gift and heirloom of a former state, 

And lie in infancy at Heaven's gate, 

Transfigured in the light that streams along the lands ! 
Around our pillows golden ladders rise, 

And up and down the skies, 

With winged sandals shod, 

The angels come, and go, the messengers of God! 
Nor do they, fading from us, e’er depart,— 

It is the childish heart; 

We walk as heretofore, 

Adown their shining ranks, but see them nevermore ! 
Not Heaven is gone, but we are blind with tears, 
Groping our way along the downward slope of years ! 

From earliest infancy my heart was thine; 

With childish feet I trod thy temple aisle ; 

Not knowing tears, I worshipped thee with smiles, 
Or if I ever wept, it was with joy divine ! 

By day, and night, on land, and sea, and air,— 

I saw thee everywhere ! 

A voice of greeting from the wind was sent; 

The mists enfolded me with soft white arms; 

The birds did sing to lap me in content, 

The rivers wove their charms, 

And every little daisy in the grass 
Did look up in my face, and smile to see me pass! 

Not long can Nature satisfy the mind, 

Nor outward fancies feed its inner flame ; 

We feel a growing want we cannot name, 

And long for something sweet, but undefined ; 

The wants of Beauty other wants create, 

Which overflow on others soon or late; 


For all that worship thee must ease the heart, 

By Love, or Song, or Art: 

Divinest Melancholy walks with thee, 

Her thin white cheek forever leaned on thine; 
And Music leads her sister Poesy, 

In exultation shouting songs divine ! 

But on thy breast Love lies,—immortal child !— 
Begot of thine own longings, deep and wild: 

The more we worship him, the more we grow 
Into thy perfect image here below ; 

For here below, as in the spheres above, 

All Love is Beauty, and all Beauty, Love ! 

Not from the things around us do we draw 
Thy light within ; within the light is born ; 

The growing rays of some forgotten morn, 

And added canons of eternal law. 

The painter’s picture, the rapt poet’s song, 

The sculptor’s statue, never saw the Day ; 

Not shaped and moulded after aught of clay, 
Whose crowning work still does its spirit wrong; 

Hue after hue divinest pictures grow, 

Line after line immortal songs arise, 

And limb by limb, out-starting stern and slow, 

The statue wakes with wonder in its eyes! 

And in the master’s mind 
Sound after sound is born, and dies like wind, 

That echoes through a range of ocean caves, 

And straight is gone to weave its spell upon the 
waves! 

The mystery is thine, 

For thine the more mysterious human heart, 

The temple of all wisdom, Beauty’s shrine, 

The oracle of Art! 

Earth is thine outer court, and Life a breath ; 

Why should we fear to die, and leave the earth ? 
Not thine alone the lesser key of Birth,— 

But all the keys of Death ; 

And all the worlds, with all that they contain 
Of Life, and Death, and Time, are thine alone; 
The universe is girdled with a chain, 

And hung below the throne 
Where Thou dost sit, the universe to bless,— 
Thou sovereign smile of God, eternal loveliness! 




A DIRGE. 



FEW frail summers had touched thee, 
As they touch the fruit; 

Not so bright as thy hair the sunshine 
Not so sweet as thy voice the lute. 
Hushed the voice, shorn the hair, all is over: 

An urn of white ashes remains ; 

Nothing else save the tears in our eyes, 


And our bitterest, bitterest pains! 

We garland the urn with white roses, 
Burn incense and gums on the shrine, 
Play old tunes with the saddest of closes, 
Dear tunes that were thine ! 

But in vain, all in vain ; 

Thou art gone—we remain ! 












RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 



THE SHADOW OF 


THE HAND. 



OU were very charming, Madam, 

In your silks and satins fine ; 

And you made your lovers drunken, 
But it was not with your wine ! 
There were court gallants in dozens, 

There were princes of the land, 

And they would have perished for you 
As they knelt and kissed your hand— 
For they saw no stain upon it , 

It was such a snowy hand ! 


But for me—I knew you better, 

And, while you were flaunting there, 
I remembered some one lying, 

With the blood on his white hair ! 
He was pleading for you, Madam, 
Where the shriven spirits stand; 
But the Book of Life was darkened, 
By the Shadow of a Hand ! 

It was tracing your perdition, 

For the blood upon your hand ! 


-• 0 + 



HE moon is muffled in a cloud, 
That folds the lover’s star, 
But still beneath thy balcony 
I touch my soft guitar. 


If thou art waking, Lady dear, 
The fairest in the land, 

Unbar thy wreathed lattice now, 
And wave thy snowy hand. 


A SERENADE. 

She hears me not; her spirit lies 
In trances mute and deep ;— 

But Music turns the golden key 
Within the gate of Sleep ! 

Then let her sleep, and if I fail 
To set her spirit free ! 

My song shall mingle in her dream, 
And she will dream of me ! 




















WALT WHITMAN. 

AUTHOR OF “ LEAVES OF GRASS.” 

ERHAPS tlie estimates of critics differ more widely respecting the 
merits or demerits of Whitman’s verse than on that of any other 
American or English poet. Certain European critics regard him as 
the greatest of all modern poets. Others, both in this country and 
abroad, declare that his so called poems are not poems at all, but 
simply a bad variety of prose. One class characterizes him the 
“poet of democracy; the spokesman of the future; full of brotherliness and hope, 
loving the warm, aremrrious pressure of the crowd and the touch of his comrade’s 
elbow in the ranks.” The other side, with equal assurance, assert that the W hitman 
culte is the passing fad of a few literary men, and especially of a number of foreign 
critics like Rosetti, Swinburne and Buchanan, who were determined to find some¬ 
thing unmistakably American—that is, different from anything else—and Whitman 
met this demand both in his personality and his verse. They further declared that 
his poetry was superlatively egotistical, his principal aim being always to laud him¬ 
self. This criticism they prove by one of his own poems entitled “Walt Whitman,” 
in which he boldly preaches his claim to the love of the masses by declaring him¬ 
self a “ typical average man ” and therefore “ not individual ” but “ universal.” 

Perhaps it is better in the scope of this article to leave Walt Whitman between 
the fires of his laudators on one side and of his decriers on the other. Certainly 
the canons of poetic art will never consent to the introduction of some things that 
he has written into the treasure-house of the muses. For instance,— 

“ And (I) remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles ; 

He stayed with me a week before he was recuperated and passed North.” 

These worse than prosaic lines do not require a critic to declare them devoid of any 
element of poetry. But on the other hand, that Whitman had genius is undeniable. 
His stalwart verse was often beautifully rhythmic and the style which he employed 
was nobly grand. Time will sift the wheat from the chaff, consuming the latter and 
preserving the golden grains of true poetry to enrich the future garners of our great 
American literature. No one of the many tributes to Lincoln, not even Lowell’s 
noble eulogy, is more deeply charged with exalted feeling than is Whitman’s dirge 
for Abraham Lincoln written after the death of the President, in which the refrain 
“ O Captain, my Captain,” is truly beautiful. Whitman was no mean master in 
ordinary blank verse, to which he often reverted in his most inspiring passages. 

124 































WALT WHITMAN. 


125 


One of the chief charms of Whitman’s poetry consists in the fact that the author 
seems to feel,.himself, always happy and cheerful, and he writes with an ease and 
abandon that is pleasant to follow. Like one strolling about aimlessly amid pleasing 
surroundings, he lets his fancy and his senses play and records just what they see 
or dictate. This characteristic, perhaps, accounts for the fact that his single expres¬ 
sions are often unsurpassed for descriptive beauty and truth, such as the reference to 
the prairies, “ where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles.” 
Whoever used a more original and striking figure? Many of his poems strikingly 
remind one in their constructions (but not in religious fervor) to the Psalms of 
David. There is also often a depth of passion and an intoxication in his rhythmic 
chant that is found perhaps in no other writer, as this specimen, personifying night, 
will illustrate: 


Press close, bare-bosomed night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing night! 

Night of the South wind ! Night of the few larger stars ! still, nodding night! Mad, naked, summer night! ” 

Again, Whitman was always hopeful. Like Emerson, he renounced all allegiance 
to the past, and looked confidently to the future. And this reminds us that Emerson 
wrote the introductory to the first edition of “ Leaves of Grass,” which suggests that 
that writer may have exerted no small influence in forming Whitman’s style, for the 
vagueness of his figures, his disconnected sentences, and occasionally his verbiage, are 
not unlike those of the “ Concord Prophet.” Again, the question arises, did he not seek, 
like Emerson, to be the founder of a school of authorship ? His friendliness toward 
young authors and his treatment of them indicate this, and the following he has 
raised up attests the success he attained, whether sought or unsought. But the old 
adage, “ like king like people,” has a deal of truth in it; and as Whitman 7 was 
inferior to Emerson in the exaltation of his ideals, and the unselfishness and sincerity 
of his nature, so his followers must fall short of the accomplishments of those who 
sat at the feet of “ the good and great Emerson.” 

Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 31, 1819, and was 
educated at the public schools of Brooklyn and New York. Subsequently he 
followed various occupations, among which were those of printer, teacher, carpenter, 
journalist, making in the meantime extended tours in Canada and the United States. 
During the Civil War he served as a volunteer nurse in the army hospitals, and at 
the close was appointed as government clerk at Washington. In 1873 he had a 
severe paralytic attack, which was followed by others, and he took up his residence 
in Camden, New Jersey, where he died in 1892. He was never married. 

Mr. Whitman’s principal publications are “ Leaves of Grass,” issued first in 1855, 
but he continued to add to and revise it, the “finished edition,” as he called it, 
appearing in 1881. Succeeding this came “ Drum Taps,” “ Two Bivulets,” “ Speci¬ 
men Days and Collect,” “November Boughs,” “Sands at Seventy.” “Democratic 
Yista ” was a prose work appearing in 1870. “ Good-Bye, My Fancy,” was his last 

book, prepared between 1890 and his death. His complete poems and prose have 
also been collected in one volume. 

Two recent biographies of the poet have been published: one by John Burroughs, 
entitled “Walt Whitman, a Study;” the other, “Walt Whitman, the Man,” by 
Thomas Donaldson. The titles indicate the difference in the two treatments. Both 
biographers are great admirers of Whitman. 


126 


WALT WHITMAN. 


DAREST THOU NOW, 0 SOUL. 

The following poems are from “ Leaves of Grass ” and are published by special permission ot Mr. Horace 
L. Trauble, Mr. Whitman’s literary executor. 


AREST thou now, 0 soul, 

Walk out with me toward the unknown 
region, 

Where neither ground is for the feet nor 
any path to follow ? 

No map there, nor guide, 

Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, 

Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are 
in that land. 

I know it not, 0 soul, 

Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us, 


All waits undream’d of in that region, that inacces¬ 
sible land. 

Till when the ties loosen, 

All but the ties eternal, Time and Space, 

Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds 
bounding us. 

Then we burst forth, we float, 

In Time and Space, 0 soul, prepared for them, 
Equal, equipt at last, (0 joy ! 0 fruit of all!) them 
to fulfil, 0 soul. 



►O*- 


0 CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 


CAPTAIN ! my Captain ! our fearful trip 
is done, 

The ship has weather’d every rack, the 
prize we sought is won, 

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all 
exulting, 

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim 
and daring; 

But 0 heart! heart! heart ! 

0 the bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 

Fallen cold and dead. 

0 Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells; 

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle 
trills, 

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the 
shores a-crowding, 


For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces 
turning ; 

Here Captain ! dear father ! 

This arm beneath your head ! 

It is some dream that on the deck, 

You’ve fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and 
still, 

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor 
will, 

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage 
closed and done, 

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object 
won ; 

Exult 0 shores, and ring 0 bells! - 
But I with mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 

Fallen cold and dead. 



*<>♦- 


IN ALL, MYSELF. 


i FROM “ SONG OF MYSELF.” 

The following lines have been commented upon as presenting a strange and erratic combination of the 
most commonplace prose with passionate and sublime poetic sentiment. 


AM the poet of the Body and I am the 
poet of the Soul, 

The pleasures of heaven are with me and 
the pains of hell are with me; 

The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter 
I translate into a new tongue. 

O 



I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, 
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a 
man, 

And I say there is nothing greater than the mother 
of men. 

























WALT WHITMAN. 


127 


I chant the chant of dilation or pride, 

We have had ducking and deprecation about enough, 

I show that size is only development. 

Have you outstript the rest? are you the President? 

It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every¬ 
one, and still pass on. 

I am he that walks with the tender and growing 
night, 

I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night. 

Press close bare-blossom’d night—press close magnetic 
nourishing night! 

o o 

Night of the South winds—night of the large few 
stars! 

Still nodding night—mad naked summer night. 


Smile, 0 voluptuous cool-breath’d earth ! 

Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! 

Earth of the departed sunset—earth of the moun¬ 
tain mist.y-topt! 

Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just 
tinged with blue ! 

Earth of the shine and dark mottling the tide of the 
river ! 

Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and 
clearer for my sake ! 

Far-swooping elbow’d earth—rich apple-blossom d 
earth ! 

Smile, for your lover comes. 

Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you 
give love! 

0 unspeakable, passionate love. 


OLD IRELAND. 


AR hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty, 
Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrow¬ 
ful mother, 

Once a queen, now lean and tatter’d 
seated on the ground, 

Her old white hair drooping dishevel’d round her 
shoulders, 

At her feet fallen an unused royal harp, 

Long silent, she too long silent, mourning her shrouded 
hope and heir, 

Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow be¬ 
cause most full of love. 

Yet a word, ancient mother, 



You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground 
with forehead between your knees ; 

0 you need not sit there veil’d in your old white hair 
so dishevel’d, 

For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave ; 

It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead; 

The Lord is not dead, he is risen again, young and 
strong, in another country, 

Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by 
the grave, 11 

What you wept for was translated, pass’d from the 
grave; 

The winds favor’d and the sea sail’d it; 

And now, with rosy and new blood, 

Moves to-day in a new country. 




PiEAN OF JOY. 


FROM “THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER.” 


Reference has been made to the similarity in style manifested in some of Whitman’s poems to the style 
of the Psalmist. Certain parts of the two selections following justify the criticism. 


OW trumpeter for thy close, 

Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet, 
Sing to my soul, renew its languishing 
faith and hope, 

Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the 
future, 

Give me for once its prophecy and joy. 



0 glad, exulting, culminating song ! 

A vigor more than earth’s is in thy notes, 

Marches of victory—man disenthrall—the conqueror 
at last, 


Hymns to the universal God from universal man—all 

j°y ! 

A reborn race appears—a perfect world, all joy ! 
Women and men in wisdom, innocence and health— 
all joy! 

Riotous, laughing bacchanals fill’d with joy ! 

War, sorrow, suffering gone—the rank earth purged 
—nothing but joy left! 

The ocean fill’d with joy—the atmosphere all joy ! 
Joy! joy ! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the 
ecstasy of life ! 

Enough to merely be ! enough to breathe ! 

Joy ! joy ! all over joy ! 























JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON. 


POET AND SCIENTIST. 



URING the past forty years Indiana has been prolific in producing 
prominent men. General Lew Wallace, James Whitcomb Riley, 
Joaquin Miller and Maurice Thompson are among the prominent 
men of letters who are natives of the “ Hoosier State.” 

Maurice Thompson is claimed as belonging to both the North and 
South, and his record, perhaps, justifies this double claim. He was 
born at Fairfield, Indiana, September 9th, 1844, but his parents removed to Ken¬ 
tucky during his childhood and subsequently to Northern Georgia. He grew up 
in the latter state, and was so thoroughly Southern in sentiment that he enlisted and 
fought in the Confederate Army. At the end of the war, however, he returned to 
Indiana, where he engaged with a Railway Surveying Party in which he proved 
himself so efficient that he was raised from a subordinate to the head position in that 
work, which he followed for some years. After a course of study in law, he began 
his practice in Crawfordsville, Indiana, the same town in which General Lew Wallace 
lived. It was from this section that he was elected to the legislature in 1879. 

Maurice Thompson is not only a man of letters, but is a scientist of considerable 
ability. In 1885, he was appointed chief of the State Geological Survey. He was 
also a Naturalist devoting much attention to ornithology. Many of his poems and 
most delightful prose sketches are descriptive of bird life 

Mr. Thompson has traveled much in the United States, and his writings in various 
periodicals as well as his books have attracted wide attention for their original obser¬ 
vation and extensive information while they are excelled by few modern writers for 
poetic richness and diction. 

The first book published by this author was entitled “ Hoosier Mosaics ” which 
appeared in 1875. Since then he has issued quite a number of volumes among 
which are “ The Witchery of Archey;” “The Tallahassee Girl;” “His Second 
Campaign ;” “ Songs of Fair Weather ;” “ At Loves Extremes ;” “ By Ways and 
Bird Notes ;” “ The Boy’s Book of Sports ;” “ A Banker of Bankersville “ Syl¬ 
van Secrets ;” “ The Story of Louisiana;” “ A Fortnight of Folly.” 

In 1890 Mr. Thompson published “ Bankers of Boonville ” and the same year 
became a staff writer for the New York Independent. 

128 
























JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON. 


129 


CERES* 


(the goddess of grain.) 


HE wheat was flowing ankle-deep 

Across the held from side to side; 
And dipping in the emerald waves, 
The swallows flew in circles wide. 

The sun, a moment flaring red, 

Shot level rays athwart the world, 

Then quenched his fire behind the hills, 
With rosy vapors o’er him curled. 

A sweet, insinuating calm,—- 

A calm just one remove from sleep, 
Such as a tranquil watcher feels, 

Seeing mild stars at midnight sweep 

Through splendid purple deeps, and swing 
Their old, ripe clusters down the west 


To where, on undiscovered hills, 

The gods have gathered them to rest,— 

A calm like that hung over all 

The dusky groves, and, filtered through 
The thorny hedges, touched the wheat 
Till every blade was bright with dew. 

Was it a dream ? We call things dreams 
When we must needs do so, or own 
Belief in old, exploded myths, 

Whose very smoke has long since flown. 

Was it a dream ? Mine own eyes saw, 
And Ceres came across the wheat 
That, like bright water, dimpled round 
The golden sandals of her feet. 



-•O 


DIANA* 

(the goddess of the chase.) 


KpSj] HE had a bow of yellow horn 

Like the old moon at early morn. 

She had three arrows strong and good, 
Steel set in feathered cornel wood. 

Like purest pearl her left breast shone 
Above her kirtle’s emerald zone; 

Her right was bound in silk well-knit, 

Lest her bow-string should sever it. 

Kipe lips she had, and clear gray eyes, 

And hair pure gold blown hoyden-wise. 

Across her face like shining mist 
That with dawn’s flush is faintly kissed. 

Her limbs ! how matched and round and fine ! 
How free like song! how strong like wine ! 


And, timed to music wild and sweet, 

How swift her silver-sandalled feet! 

Single of heart and strong of hand, 

Wind-like she wandered through the land. 

No man (or king or lord or churl) 

Dared whisper love to that fair girl. 

And woe to him who came upon 
Her nude, at bath, like Acteon ! 

So dire his fate, that one who heard 
The flutter of a bathing bird, 

What time he crossed a breezy wood, 

Felt sudden quickening of his blood ; 

Cast one swift look, then ran away 

Far through the green, thick groves of May; 

Afeard, lest down the wind of spring 
He’d hear an arrow whispering! 


*By permission of “ Houghton, Mifflin & Co.” 



















m.f.nimimmmfmhni.t^ 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDBICH. 

ITHOUT the rich imagination of Stoddard, or the versatility of Sted- 
man, Mr. Aldrich surpasses them both in delicate and artistic skill. 
His jewelled lines, exquisitely pointed, express a single mood or a 
dainty epigram with a pungent and tasteful beauty that places him 
easily at the head of our modern lyrical writers. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 
November 11, 1836. In childhood he was taken to Louisiana, where he remained 
a number of years, his father being a merchant at New Orleans. After returning 
to Portsmouth, he was preparing for college when his father suddenly died, making 
it necessary for him to relinquish this design, to take a position of immediate remun¬ 
eration, which he found in his uncle’s counting house in New York. This pursuit 
he found so far removed from the bent of his mind, however, that he gave it up 
after three years to take a situation as a reader in a New York publishing house. 
During his mercantile career he contributed to the current press, and afterwards be¬ 
came attached to various periodicals as contributor or in an editorial capacity. 
Among others, he worked on N. P. Willis’ “Home Journal,” the “Illustrated News,” 
and the “New York Evening Mirror.” During the Civil War he was for a time 
with the Army of the Potomac, as a newspaper correspondent. In 1865, he 
married, and removed to Boston, where he edited “The Weekly Journal” every 
Saturday. He remained with this paper until 1874. In 1881 he succeeded Wil¬ 
liam Dean Howells as editor of the “Atlantic Monthly.” This position he resigned 
in 1890 in order to devote himself to personal literary work and travel. The de¬ 
gree of A. M. was conferred upon him in 1883 by Yale, and in 1896 by Harvard 
University. 

t.' 

Mr. Aldrich had published one volume of verse, “The Bells” (1854), a collec¬ 
tion of juvenile verses, before the “Ballad of Baby Bell and Other Poems” ap¬ 
peared in 1858, and made his reputation as a poet. Other volumes of his poetry 
issued at the following dates are entitled: “Pampinea and Other Poems” (1861), 
“Cloth of Gold and Other Poems” (1873), “Flower and Thorn” (1876), “Friar 
Jerome’s Beautiful Book” (1881), “Mercedes and Later Lyrics”'(1883), “Wvnd- 
ham Towers” (1889), “Judith and Holofernes, a Poem” (1896). 

Among the prose works of the author we mention “Out of His Head, a Bomance” 
(1862), “The Story of a Bad Boy” (1869),—which became at once a favorite by 
its naturalness and purity of spirit,—“Majorie Daw and Other People” (1873), 
“Prudence Palfrey” (1874), “The Queen of Sheba” (1877), “The Stillwater 
Tragedy” (1880), “From Ponkapogto Pesth” (1883), “The Sisters Tragedy” (1890), 

130 
























THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 


131 


“An Old Town by the Sea;” and “Two Bites at a Cherry and other Tales” 
(1893), “ Unguarded Gates ” (1895). “ Complete Works,” in eight volumes, were 

published in 1897. Mr. Aldrich is said to be a man of the world as well as a man 
of letters and his personal popularity equals his literary reputation. We cannot 
better illustrate his companionable nature and close this sketch than by presenting 
the following pen picture of an incident, clipped from a recent magazine: 

“ During a visit to England, upon one occasion, Mr. Aldrich was the guest of 
William Black, with a number of other well known people. An English journa¬ 
list of some distinction, who had no time to keep in touch with the personality of 





iiiP 


thomas b. aldrich’s study. 


poets, met Mr. Aldrich, and they became excellent friends. They went on long 
shooting expeditions together, and found each other more than good companions. 
The last night of their stay came, and after dinner Mr. Black made a little speech, 
in which he spoke of Mr. Aldrich’s poetry in a graceful fashion. The London 
journalist gave a gasp, and looked at Mr. Aldrich, who rose to make a response, as 
if he had never seen him before. As the poet sat down he leaned over him, and 

said:— _ ^ ;) 

“ Say, Aldrich, are you the man who writes books ? 

“ Yes,” Mr. Aldrich said. “ I am glad you don’t know, for I am sure you liked 
me for myself.” 












THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 



ALEC YEATON’S SON* 

GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720 . 

Then, steady, helm ! Right straight he sailed 
Towards the headland light: 

The wind it moaned, the wind it wailed, 

And black, black fell the night. 


Snug in the stern-sheets, little John 
Laughed as the scud swept by ; 

But the skipper’s sunburnt cheek grew wan 
As he watched the wicked sky. 

“ Would he were at his mother’s side ! ” 

And the skipper’s eyes were dim. 

•“ Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide, 

What would become of him! 

•“ For me—my muscles are as steel, 

For me let hap what may: 

I might make shift upon the keel 
Until the break o’ day. 

“ But he, he is so weak and small, 

So young, scarce learned to stand— 

0 pitying Father of us all, 

I trust him in thy hand ! 

“ For Thou, who markest from on high 
A sparrow’s fall—each one !— 

Surely, 0 Lord, thou'lt have an eye 
On Alec Yeaton’s son ! ” 


Then burst a storm to make one quail 
Though housed from winds and waves— 
They who could tell about that gale 
Must rise from watery graves ! 

Sudden it came, as sudden went; 

Ere half the night was sped, 

The winds were hushed, the waves were spent, 
And the stars shone overhead. 

Now, as the morning mist grew thin, 

The folk on Gloucester shore 
Saw a little figure floating in 
Secure, on a broken oar ! 

Up rose the cry, “A wreck ! a wreck ! 

Pull, mates, and waste no breath ! ”— 

They knew it, though ’t was but a speck 
Upon the edge of death ! 

Long did they marvel in the town 
At God His strange decree, 

That let the stalwart skipper drown 
And the little child go free! 



HE wind it wailed, the wind it moaned, 

And the white caps flecked the sea; 
“An’ I would to God,” the skipper groaned, 
I had not my boy with me ! ” 


U 


-•O" 


ON LYNN 


LL day to watch the blue wave curl and 
break, 

All night to hear it plunging on the 
shore— 

In this sea-dream such draughts of life I 
take, 

I cannot ask for more. 

Behind me lie the idle life and vain, 

The task unfinished, and the weary hours ; 

That long wave softly bears me back to Spain 
And the Alhambra’s towers ! 

Once more I halt in Andalusian Pass, 

To list the mule-bells jingling on the height; 
Below, against the dull esparto grass, 

The almonds glimmer white. 


TERRACE* 

Huge gateways, wrinkled, with rich grays and browns, 
Invite my fancy, and I wander through 
The gable-shadowed, zigzag streets of towns 
The world’s first sailors knew. 

Or, if I will, from out this thin sea-haze 
Low-lying cliffs of lovely Calais rise ; 

Or yonder, with the pomp of olden days, 

Venice salutes my eyes. 

Or some gaunt castle lures me up its stair; 

I see, far off, the red-tiled hamlets shine, 

And catch, through slits of windows here and there, 
Blue glimpses of the Rhine. 

Again I pass Norwegian fjord and field, 

And through bleak wastes to where the sunset’s fires 



*By special permission of the Author. 















THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 


133 


Light up the white-walled Russian citadel, 

The Kremlin’s domes and spires. 

And now I linger in green English lanes, 

By garden plots of rose and heliotrope; 

And now I face the sudden pelting rains 
On some lone Alpine slope. 

Now at Tangier, among the packed bazars, 

I saunter, and the merchants at the doors 
Smile, and entice me: here are jewels like stars, 
And curved knives of the Moors ; 

Cloths of Damascus, strings of amber dates; 


What would Howadji—silver, gold, or stone ? 
Prone on the sun-scorched plain outside the gates 
The camels make their moan. 

All this is mine, as I lie dreaming here, 

High on the windy terrace, day by day; 

And mine the children’s laughter, sweet and clear, 
Ringing across the bay. 

For me the clouds ; the ships sail by for me ; 

For me the petulant sea-gull takes its flight; 

And mine the tender moonrise on the sea, 

And hollow caves of night. 


SARGENT’S PORTRAIT OF EDWIN BOOTH AT “THE PLAYERS.” 

By Permission of the Author. 



HAT face which no man ever saw 
And from his memory banished quite, 
With eyes in which are Hamlet’s awe 
And Cardinal Richelieu’s subtle light 
Looks from this frame. A master’s hand 
Has set the master-player here, 

In the fair temple * that he planned 
Not for himself. To us most dear 
This image of him ! “ It was thus 
He looked; such pallor touched his cheek ; 


With that same grace he greeted us— 
Nay, ’t is the man, could it but speak !” 
Sad words that shall be said some day— 
Far fall the day ! 0 cruel Time, 

Whose breath sweeps mortal things away, 
Spare long this image of his prime, 

That others standing in the place 
Where, save as ghosts, we come no more, 
May know what sweet majestic face 
The gentle Prince of Players wore! 


*The club-house in Gramercy Park, New York, was the gift of Mr. Booth to the association founded by him ana 
named “ The Players.” 












RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 


“ POET, EDITOR AND REFORMER.’’ 

MONG the current poets of America, few, perhaps, deserve more 
favorable mention than the subject of this sketch. His poetry is 
notable for its purity of sentiment and delicacy of expression. The 
story of his life also is one to stimulate the ambition of youth, who, 
in this cultured age, have not enjoyed the benefits of that college 
training which has come to be regarded as one of the necessary pre¬ 
liminaries to literary aspiration. This perhaps is properly so, that the public may 
not be too far imposed upon by incompetent writers. And while it makes the way 
very hard for him who attempts to scale the walls and force his passage into the 
world of letters—having not this passport through the gateway—it is the more 
indicative of the “ real genius ” that he should assay the task in an heroic effort; 
and, if he succeeds in surmounting them, the honor is all the greater, and the laurel 
wreath is placed with more genuine enthusiasm upon the victor’s brow by an 
applauding public. 

Richard Watson Gilder does not enjoy the distinction of being a college graduate. 
He received his education principally in Bellevue Seminary, Bordentown, New 
Jersey (where he was boro February 8, 1844), under the tutelage of his father, Rev. 
Wm. H. Gilder. Mr. Gilder’s intention was to become a lawyer and began to 
study for that profession in Philadelphia ; but the death of his father, in 1864, 
made it necessary for him to abandon law to take up something that would bring 
immediate remuneration. This opportunity was found on the staff of the Newark, 
New Jersey, “ Daily Advertiser,” with which he remained until 1868, when he 
resigned and founded the “ Newark Morning Register,” with Newton Crane as 
joint editor. The next year, Mr. Gilder, then twenty-five years of age, was called 
to New York as editor of “ Hours at Home,” a monthly journal. 

His editorials in “ Hours at Home ” attracted public attention, and some of his 
poems were recognized as possessing superior merit. Dr. G. Holland, editor of 
“Scribner’s Monthly,” was especially drawn to the rising young poet and when, 
in 1870, it became the “Century Magazine,” Dr. Holland chose Mr. Gilder as his 
associate editor. On the death of Dr. Holland, in 1881, Mr. Gilder became editor-in- 
chief. Under his able management of its columns the popularity of the “Century” 
has steadily advanced, the contribution of his pen and especially his occasional poems 
adding no small modicum to its high literary standing. His poetic compositions have 
been issued from time to time in book form and comprised several volumes of 

134 









































RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 


135 


poems, among which are “ The New Day;” “ The Poet and His Master “ Lyrics ; ” 
and “ The Celestial Passion.” 

Aside from his literary works, Mr. Gilder has been, in a sense, a politician and 
reformer. By the word politician we do not mean the “ spoils-hunting partisan 
class,”. but, like Bryant, from patriotic motives he has been an independent 
champion of those principles which he regards to be the interest of his country and 
mankind at large. He comes by his disposition to mix thus in public affairs 
honestly. His father, before him, was an editor and writer as well as a clergyman. 
Thus “ he was born,” as the saying goes, “ with printer’s ink in his veins.” When 
sixteen years of age (1860) he set up and printed a little paper in New Jersey, 
which became the organ of the Bell and Everett party in that section. Since that 
date he has manifested a lively interest in all public matters, where he considered 
the public good at stake. It was this disposition which forced him to the front in 
the movement for the betterment of the condition of tenement-houses in New York. 
He was pressed into the presidency of the Tenement-House Commission in 1894, 
and through his zeal a thorough inspection was made—running over a period of 
eight months—vastly improving the comfort and health of those who dwell in the 
crowded tenements of New York City. The influence of the movement has done 
much good also in other cities. 

Mr. Gilder also takes a deep interest in education, and our colleges have, no 
stauncher friend than he. His address on “ Public Opinion ” has been delivered by 
invitation before Yale, Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities. We quote a 
paragraph from this address which clearly sets forth his conception of public duty 
as it should be taught by our institutions of learning :— 

“ Who will lift high the standard of a disinterested and righteous public opiniop 
if it is not the institutions of learning, great and small, private and public, that are 
scattered throughout our country ? They are the responsible press, and the unsen- 
sational but fearless pulpit—it is these that must discriminate; that must set the 
standard of good taste and good morals, personal and public. They together must 
cultivate fearless leaders, and they must educate and inspire the following that makes 
leadership effectual and saving.” 

As appears from the above Mr. Gilder is a man of exalted ideals. He despises 
sham, hypocrisy and all “ wickedness in high places.” He regards no man with so 
much scorn as he who uses his office or position to defend or shield law-breakers 
and enemies of the public. In his own words,— 

“ He, only, is the despicable one 

Who lightly sells his honor as a shield 
For fawning knaves, to hide them from the sun. 

Too nice for crime yet, coward, he doth yield 
For crime a shelter. Swift to Paradise 
The contrite thief, not Judas with his price!” 


13G 


RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 


SONNET. 

(AFTER THE ITALIAN.) 


From the “ Five Books of Song. 

KNOW not if I love her overmuch ; 

1C »g|| But this I know, that when unto her face 
She lifts her hand, which rests there, still, 
a space, 

Then slowly falls—'tis I who feel that touch. 

And when she sudden shakes her head, with such 
A look, I soon her secret meaning trace. 

So when she runs I think ’tis I who race. 


( 1894 .) The Century Co. 

Like a poor cripple who has lost his crutch 
I am if she is gone; and when she goes, 

I know not why, for that is a strange art— 

As if myself should from myself depart. 

I know not if I love her more than those 

Who long her light have known ; but for the rose 
She covers in her hair, I'd give my heart. 


THE LIFE MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


From “ For the Country.” ( 1897 .) The Century Co. 


HIS bronze doth keep the very form and 
mold 

Of our great martyr’s face. Yes, this 
is he: 

That brow all wisdom, all benignity; 

That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that 
hold 

Like some harsh landscape all the summer’s gold; 
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea 



For storms to beat on ; the lone agony 
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold. 

Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men 
As might some prophet of the elder day— 
Brooding above the tempest and the fray 
With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. 
A power was his beyond the touch of art 
Or armed strength—his pure and mighty heart. 


SHERIDAN. 


From “ For the Country.” 

UIETLY, like a child 

That sinks in slumber mild, 

No pain or troubled thought his well-earned 
peace to mar, 

Sank into endless rest our thunder-bolt of war. 

Though his the power to smite 
Quick as the lightning’s light,— 

His single arm an army, and his name a host,— 

Not his the love of blood, the warrior’s cruel boast. 

But in the battle’s flame 
How glorious he came !— 

Even like a white-combed wave that breaks and 
tears the shore. 

While wreck lies strewn behind, and terror flies before. 

’Twas he,—his voice, his might,— 

Could stay the panic flight, 

Alone shame back the headlong, many-leagued retreat, 
And turn to evening triumph morning’s foul defeat. 


( 1897 .) The Century Co. 

He was our modern Mars; 

Yet firm his faith that wars 
Ere long would cease to vex the sad, ensanguined earth, 
And peace forever reign, as at Christ’s holy birth. 

Blest land, in whose dark hour 
Arise to loftiest power 

No dazzlers of the sword to play the tyrant’s part, 
But patriot-soldiers, true and pure and high of heart! 

Of such our chief of all; 

And he who broke the wall 
Of civil strife in twain, no more to build or mend ; 
And he who hath this day made Death his faithful 
friend. 

And now above his tomb 
From out the eternal gloom 
“ Welcome ! ” his chiftain’s voice sounds o’er the 
cannon’s knell; 

And of the three one only stays to say “ Farewell! ” 



























RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 


137 


SUNSET FROM THE TRAIN* 


From “ Five Books of Song ” (1894). 



UT then the sunset smiled, 

Smiled once and turned toward dark, 
Above the distant, wavering line of trees 
that filed 


Along the horizon’s edge ; 

Like hooded monks that hark 
Through evening air 
The call to prayer ;— 

Smiled once, and faded slow, slow, slow away; 

When, like a changing dream, the long cloud- 
wedge, 

Brown-gray. 

Grew saffron underneath and, ere I knew, 

The interspace, green-blue— 


The whole, illimitable, western, skyey shore, 

The tender, human, silent sunset smiled cnce more. 

Thee, absent loved one, did I think on now, 
Wondering if thy deep brow 
In dreams of me were lifted to the skies, 

Where, by our far sea-home, the sunlight dies; 

If thou didst stand alone, 

Watching the day pass slowly, slow, as here, 

But closer and more dear, 

Beyond the meadow and the long, familiar line 
Of blackening pine; 

When lo ! that second smile ;—dear heart, it was 
thine own. 


“0 SILVER RIVER FLOWING TO THE SEA.”* 


Five Books of Song ” (1894). 


From 

SILVER river flowing to the sea, 

Strong, calm, and solemn as thy moun 
tains be! 

Poets have sung thy ever-living power, 
Thy wintry day, and summer sunset hour; 

Have told how rich thou art, how broad, how deep; 
What commerce thine, how many myriads reap 
The harvest of thy waters. They have sung 
Thy moony nights, when every shadow flung 
From cliff or pine is peopled with dim ghosts 
Of settlers, old-world fairies, or the hosts 
Of savage warriors that once plowed thy waves— 
Now hurrying to the dance from hidden graves; 
The waving outline of thy wooded mountains, 


Thy populous towns that stretch from forest fountains 
On either side, far to the salty main, 

Like golden coins alternate on a chain. 

Thou pathway of the empire of the North, 

Thy praises through the earth have traveled forth ! 

I hear thee praised as one who hears the shout 
That follows when a hero from the rout 
Of battle issues, “ Lo. how brave is he, 

How noble, proud, and beautiful!” But she 
Who knows him best—“ How tender !” So thou art 
The river of love to me! 

—Heart of my heart, 

Dear love and bride—is it not so indeed ?— 

Among your treasures keep this new-plucked reed. 



“THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.”* 
From “ Five Books of Song" (1894). 


HERE is nothing new under the sun; 
There is no new hope or despair; 
The agony just begun 

Is as old as the earth and the air. 
My secret soul of bliss 

Is one with the singing stars, 

And the ancient mountains miss 
No hurt that my being mars. 


That there is no lonely strife, 

That he is mad who would gain 
A separate balm for his woe, 

A single pity and cover; 

The one great God I know 

Hears the same prayer over and over. 

I know it because at the portal 
Of Heaven I bowed and cried, 

And I said : “ Was ever a mortal 
Thus crowned and crucified ! 


I know as I know my life, 

I know as I know my pain, 


* Copyright, The Century Co. 























138 


RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 


My praise thou hast made my blame; 

My best thou hast made my worst; 
My good thou hast turned to shame; 
My drink is a flaming thirst.” 

But scarce my prayer was said 
Ere from that place I turned ; 


I trembled, I hung my head, 

My cheek, shame-smitten, burned; 
For there where I bowed down 
In my boastful agony, 

I thought of thy cross and crown— 

0 Christ! I remembered thee. 


MEMORIAL DAY* 

From “ Five Books of Song ” (1894). 


E saw the bayonets flashing in the sun, 
The flags that proudly waved; she heard 
the bugles calling; 

She saw the tattered banners falling 
About the broken staffs, as one by one 
The remnant of the mighty army passed; 

And at the last 

Flowers for the graves of those whose fight was done. 

She heard the tramping of ten thousand feet 
As the long line swept round the crowded square ; 
She heard the incessant hum 


That filled the warm and blossom-scented air— 

The shrilling fife, the roll and throb of drum, 

The happy laugh, the cheer. Oh glorious and meet 
To honor thus the dead, 

Who chose the better part, 

Who for their country bled ! 

—The dead ! Great God ! she stood there in the 
street, 

Living, yet dead in soul and mind and heart— 

While far away 

His grave was decked with flowers by strangers’ hands 
to-day. 



<>♦■ 


A WOMAN’S THOUGHT* 


From “ Five Books of Song ” (1894). 


AM a woman—therefore I may not 
Call him, cry to him, 

Fly to him, 

Bid him delay not! 

And when he comes to me, I must sit quiet; 
Still as a stone— 

All silent and cold. 

If my heart riot— 

Crush and defy it! 

Should I grow bold, 

Say one dear thing to him, 

All my life fling to him, 

Cling to him— 

What to atone 
Is enough for my sinning! 

This were the cost to me, 

This were my winning — 

That he were lost to me. 



Not as a lover 
At last if he part from me, 
Tearing my heart from me, 
Hurt beyond cure— 

Calm and demure 
Then must I hold me, 

In myself fold me, 

Lest he discover; 

Showing no sign to him 
By look of mine to him 
What he has been to me— 
How my heart turns to him, 
Follows him, yearns to him, 
Prays him to love me. 


Pity me, lean to me, 
Thou God above me ! 


* Copyright, The Century Co. 
















JOHN HAY. 


AUTHOR OF “ LITTLE BREECHES.’' 



SIDE from General Lew Wallace and Edmund Clarence Stedman few 
business men or politicians have made a brighter mark in literature 
than the subjcet of this sketch. 

John Hay was born at Salem, Indiana, October 8th, 1838. He 
was graduated at Brown’s University at the age of twenty, studied 
law and began to practice at Springfield, Illinois, in 1861. Soon 
after this he was made private secretary of President Lincoln, which position he 
filled throughout the latter’s administration. He also acted as Lincoln’s adjutant 
and aid-de-camp, and it was in consequence of this that he was brevetted colonel. 
He also saw service under Generals Hunter and Gilmore as major and assistant 
adjutant general. After the close of the war Mr. Hay was appointed United 
States Secrectary of Legation at Paris, serving in this capacity from 1865 to 1867, 
when he was appointed charge d'affaires , where he served for two years, being, 
removed to take a position as Secretary of Legation at Madrid, where he remained 
until 1870, at which time he returned to the United States and accepted an editorial 
position on the “New York Tribune.” This he resigned and removed to Cleveland, 
Ohio, in 1875, where he entered politics, taking an active part in the presidential 
campaigns of 1876, 1880 and 1884. Under President Hayes he was appointed as 
first assistant Secretary of State, which position he filled for nearly three years, and 
has made his home at Washington since that date. On March 17th, Mr. Hay was 
appointed by President McKinley as ambassador to Great Britian, where he was 
accorded the usual hearty welcome tendered by the British to American ambassa¬ 
dors, many of whom during the past fifty years having been men of high literary 
attainment. Shortly after Mr. Hay’s arrival he was called upon to deliver an 
address at the unveiling of the Walter Scott monument, in which he did his country 
credit and maintained his own reputation as an orator and a man of letters. 

As an author Mr. Hay’s first published works were the “Pike County Ballads 
and Other Pieces” (1871), “Castilian Days” (1871), “Poems” (1890), and, (in 
conjunction with Mr. Nicolay), “Abraham Lincoln: a History,” which is regarded 
as the authoritative biography of Mr. Lincoln. This was first published in serial 
form in the “Century Magazine” from 1887 to 1889. Colonel Hay has also been 
a frequent contributor to high class periodicals, and to him has been ascribed the 
authorship of the anonymous novel “The Bread Winners,” which caused such 

agitation in labor circles a few years ago. 

139 
























140 


JOHN HAY. 


Like many authors, Mr. Hay came into popularity almost by accident. Cer¬ 
tainly lie had no expectation of becoming prominent when he wrote his poem 
“Little Breeches;” yet that poem caused him to be remembered by a wider class of 
readers, perhaps, than anything else he has contributed to literature. The follow¬ 
ing account of how this poem came to be written was published after Mr. Hay’s 
appointment to the Court of St. Janies in 1897. The statement is given as made by 
Mr. A. L. Williams, an acquaintance of Mr. Hay, who lives in Topeka, Kansas, 
and knows the circumstances. “The fact is,” says Mr. Williams, “the poem ‘Little 
Breeches’ and its reception by the American people make it one of the most 
humorous features of this day. It was written as a burlesque, and for no other 
purpose. Bret Harte had inaugurated a maudlin literature at a time when the 
Titery ’ people of the United States were affected with hysteria. Under the inspira¬ 
tion of his genius, to be good was commonplace, to be virtuous was stupid—only 
gamblers, murderers and women of ill fame were heroic. Crime had reached its 
apotheosis. John Hay believed that ridicule would help cure this hysteria, and 
thus believing, wrote the burlesque, 4 Little Breeches.’ Wanting to make the burles¬ 
que so broad that the commonest intellect could grasp it, he took for his hero an 
unspeakably wretched brat whom no angel would touch unless to drop over the 
walls into Tophet, and made him the object of a special angelic miracle. 

“Well, John sprung his ‘Little Breeches’ and then sat Lick with his mouth wide 
open to join in the laugh which he thought it would evoke iium his readers. To his 
intense astonishment, people took it seriously, and instead of laughing Bret Harte 
out of the field, immediately made John Hay a formidable rival to that gentleman.” 

Next to “ Little Breeches ” the poem “Jim Bludso,” perhaps, contributed most to 
Mr. Hay’s reputation. Both of these selections will be found in the succeeding pages. 


LITTLE 

DON’T go much on religion, 

I never ain’t had no show; 

But I’ve got a middlin’ tight grip, sir, 
On the handful o’ things I know. 

I don’t pan out on the prophets 

And free-will, and that sort of thing— 
But I b’lieve in God and the angels, 

Ever sence one night last spring. 

I come into town with some turnips, 

And my little Gabe come along— 

No four-year-old in the county 

Could heat him for pretty and strong, 
Peart and chipper and sassy, 

Always ready to swear and fight— 

And I’d learnt him to chaw terbacker 
Jest to keep his milk-teeth white. 

The snow come down like a blanket 
As I passed by Taggart’s store ; 

I went in for a jug of molasses 
And left the team at the door. 


BREECHES. 

They scared at something and started— 
I heard one little squall, 

And hell-to-split over the prairie 

Went team, Little Breeches and all. 

TIell-to-split over the prairie ; 

I was almost froze with skeer ; 

But we rousted up some torches, 

And searched for ’em far and near. 

At last we struck hosses and wa^on, 
Snowed under a soft white mound, 
Upsot—dead beat—but of little Gabe 
No hide nor hair was found. 

And here all hope soured on me, 

Of my fellow-critters’ aid, 

I jest flopped down on my marrowbones, 
Crotch deep in the snow, and prayed. 
•••••• 

By this, the torches was played out, 

And me and Isrul Parr 
Went off for some wood to a sheepfold 
That he said was somewhar thar. 











JOHN HAY. 


141 


We found it at last, and a little shed 
Where they shut up the lambs at night, 
We looked in and seen them huddled thar, 
So warm and sleepy and white ; 

And thar sot Little Breeches and chirped, 
As peart as ever you see, 

“ I want a chaw of terbacker, 

An’ that’s what’s the matter of me.” 


How did he git thar ? Angels. 

He could never have walked in that storm ; 
They jest scooped down and toted him 
To whar it was safe and warm. 

And I think that saving a little child, 

An’ fotching him to his own, 

Is a derned sight better business 
Than loafing around the Throne. 




JIM BLUDSO.* 

OF “ THE PRAIRIE BELLE.” 


ALL, no; I can’t tell you whar he lives, 
Because he don’t live, you see ; 
Leastways, lie’s got out of the habit 
Of livin’ like you and me. 

Whar have you been for the last three year 
That you haven’t heard folks tell 
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks 
The night of the Prairie Belle ? 

He weren’t no saint—them engineers 
Is all pretty much alike— 

One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill, 

And another one here, in Pike; 

A keerless man in his talk was Jim, 

And an awkward hand in a row, 

But he never flunked, and he never lied— 

I reckon he never knowed how. 

And this was all the religion he had— 

To treat his engine well; 

Never be passed on the river ; 

To mind the pilot’s bell; 

And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire— 

A thousand times he swore, 

He’d hold her nozzle agin the bank 
Till the last soul got ashore. 

All boats has their day on the Mississip, 

And her day come at last— 

The Movastar was a better boat, 

But the Belle she wouldn’t be passed, 


And so she come fearin’ along that night— 

The oldest craft on the line— 

With a nigger squat on her safety-valve, 

And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine. 

A fire burst out as she dared the bar, 

And burnt a hole in the night, 

And quick as a flash she turned, and made 
For that willer-bank on the right. 

There was runnin’, and cursin’, but Jim yelled out, 
Over all the infernal roar, 

“ I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank 
Till the last galoot’s ashore.” 

Through the hot black breath of the burnin’ boat 
Jim Bludso’s voice was heard, 

And they all had trust in his cussedness, 

And knowed he would keep his word, 

And, sure’s you’re born, they all got off 
Afore the smokestacks fell— 

And Bludso’s ghost went up alone 
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle. 

He weren’t no saint; but at judgment 
I’d run my chance with Jim, 

’Longside some pious gentlemen 

That wouldn’t shook hands with him. 

He seen his duty—a dead-sure thing— 

And went for it thar and then ; 

And Christ ain’t a-going to be too hard 
On a man that died for men. 



o 


HOW IT HAPPENED* 



PRAY your pardon, Elsie, 

And smile that frown away 
That dims the light of your lovely face 
As a thunder-cloud the day, 


I really could not help it,— 

Before I thought, it was done,— 

And those great grey eyes flashed bright and cold, 
Like an icicle in the sun. 


* Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin Sc Co. 


















142 


JOHN HAY. 


I was thinking of the summers 
When we were boys and girls, 

And wandered in the blossoming woods, 

And the gay wind romped with her curls. 

And you seemed to me the same little girl 
I kissed in the alder-path, 

I kissed the little girl’s lips, and alas! 

I have roused a woman’s wrath. 

There is not so much to pardon,— 

For why were your lips so red ? 

The blonde hair fell in a shower of gold 
From the proud, provoking head. 

And the beauty that flashed from the splendid ey 
And played round the tender mouth, 

Rushed over my soul like a warm sweet wind 
That blows from the fragrant South. 


And where after all is the harm done ? 

I believe we were made to be gay, 

And all of youth not given to love 
Is vainly squandered away, 

And strewn through life’s low labors, 

Like gold in the desert sands, 

Are love’s swift kisses and sighs and vows 
And the clasp of clinging hands. 

And when you are old and lonely, 

In memory’s magic shrine 
You will see on your thin and wasting hands, 
Like gems, these kisses of mine. 

And when you muse at evening 

At the sound of some vanished name, 

The ghost of my kisses shall touch your lips 
And kindle your heart to flame. 








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WELL-KNOWN WESTERN POETS, 


















JAMES WHITCOMB BILEY. 

“the hoosier poet.” 


poet of the modern times has obtained a greater popularity with the 
masses than the Indianian, James Whitcomb Biley, who has recently 
obtained the rank of a National Poet, and whose temporary hold 
upon the people equals, if it does not exceed, that of any living 
verse writer. The productions of this author have crystallized 
certain features of life that will grow in value as time goes by. 
In reading “The Old Swimmin’ Hole,” one almost feels the cool refreshing water 
touch the thirsty skin. And such poems as “Griggsby’s Station,” “Airly Hays,” 
“When the Frost is on the Punkin,” “That Old Sweetheart of Mine,” and others, 
go straight to the heart of the reader with a mixture of jJeasant recollections, ten¬ 
derness, humor, and sincerity, that is most delightful in its effect. 

Mr. Biley is particularly a poet of the country people. Though he was not 
raised on a farm himself, he had so completely imbibed its atmosphere that his 
readers would scarcely believe he was not the veritable Benjamin F. Johnston, the 
simple-hearted Boone County farmer, whom he honored with the authorship of his 
early poems. To every man who has been a country boy and “played hookey” on 
the school-master to go swimming or fishing or bird-nesting or stealing water-melons, 
or simply to lie on the orchard grass, many of Biley’s poems come as an echo from 
his own experiences, bringing a vivid and pleasingly melodious retrospect of the past. 

Mr. Biley’s “Child Verses” are equally as famous. There is an artless catching 
sing-song in his verses, not unlike the jingle of the “Mother Goose Melodies.” 
Especially fine in their faithfulness to child-life, and in easy rythm, are the pieces 
describing “Little Orphant Allie” and “The Bagged Man.” 

An’ Little Orphant Allie says, when the blaze is blue, 

An’ the lampwick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo! 

An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray, 

An’ the lightnin’-bug in dew is all squenched away,— 

You better mind yer parents and yer teacher fond an’ dear, 

An’ cherish them ’at loves you and dry the orphant’s tear, 

An’ he’p the poor an’ needy ones ’at cluster all about, 

Er the gobble-uns ’ll git you 

Ef you—don’t— ivaich — 'Out. 

James Whitcomb Biley was born in Greenfield, Indiana, in 1853. His father 
was a Quaker, and a leading attorney of that place, and desired to make a lawyer 

143 




























144 


JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. 


of his son; but Mr. Riley tells us, “Whenever I picked up ‘Blackstone’ or‘Green- 
leaf,’ my wits went to wool-gathering, and my father was soon convinced that his hopes 
of my achieving greatness at the bar were doomed to disappointment.” Referring to 
his education, the poet further says, “ I never had much schooling, and what I did 
get, I believe did me little good. I never could master mathematics, and history 
was a dull and juiceless thing to me ; but I always was fond of reading in a random 
way, and took naturally to the theatrical. I cannot remember when I was not a 
declaimer, and I began to rhyme almost as soon as I could talk.” 

Riley’s first occupation was as a sign painter for a patent-medicine man, with 
whom he traveled for a year. On leaving this employment he organized a company 
of sign painters, with whom he traveled over the country giving musical entertain¬ 
ments and painting signs. In referring to this he says, “All the members of the 
company were good musicians as well as painters, and we used to drum up trade 
with our music. We kept at it for three or four years, made plenty of money, had 
lots of fun, and did no harm to ourselves or any one else. Of course, during this 
sign painting period, I was writing verses all the time, and finally after the Graphic 
Company’s last trip I secured a position on the weekly paper at Anderson.” For 
many years Riley endeavored to have his verses published in various magazines, 
“sending them from one to another,” he says, “to get them promptly back again.” 
Finally, he sent some verses to the poet Longfellow, who congratulated him warmly, 
as did also Mr. Lowell, to whose “ New England Dialectic Poems ” Mr. Riley’s 
“Hoosier Rhymes” bore a striking resemblance. From this time forward his 
success was assured, and, instead of hunting publishers, he has been kept more than 
busy in supplying their eager demands upon his pen. 

Mr. Riley’s methods of work are peculiar to himself. His poems are composed 
as he travels or goes about the streets, and, once they are thought out, he immediately 
stops and transfers them to paper. But he must work as the mood or muse moves 
him. He cannot be driven. On this point he says of himself, “ It is almost impos¬ 
sible for me to do good work on orders. If I have agreed to complete a poem at a 
certain time, I cannot do it at all; but when I can write without considering the 
future, I get along much better.” He further says, with reference to writing dialect, 
that it is not his preference to do so. He prefers the recognized poetic form ; “but,” 
he adds, “ dialectic verse is natural and gains added charm from its very common¬ 
placeness. If truth and depiction of nature are wanted, and dialect is a touch of 
nature, then it should not be disregarded. I follow nature as closely as I can, and 
try to make my people think and speak as they do in real life, and such success as 
I have achieved is due to this.” 

The first published work of the author was “The Old Swimmin’ Hole” and 
“ ’Leven More Poems,” which appeared in 1883. Since that date he published a 
number of volumes. Among the most popular may be mentioned, “ Armazindy,” 
which contains some of his best dialect and serious verses, including the famous Poe 
Poem, “ Leonainie,” written and published in early life as one of the lost poems of 
Poe, and on which he deceived even Poe’s biographers, so accurate was he in 
mimicking the style of the author of the “Raven; ” “Neighborly Poems;” “Sketches 
in Prose,” originally published as “ The Boss Girl and Other Stories;” “After¬ 
whiles,” comprising sixty-two poems and sonnets, serious, pathetic, humorous and 


JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. 


145 


dialectic; “ Pipes O’ Pan,” containing five sketches and fifty poems; “ Rhymes 
of Childhood;” “Flying Islands of the Night,” a weird and grotesque drama in 
verse; “ Green Fields and Running Brooks,” comprising one hundred and two 
poems and sonnets, dialectic, humorous and serious. 

The poet has never married. He makes his home in Indianapolis, Indiana, with 
his sister, where his surroundings are of the most pleasant nature; and he is scarcely 
less u favorite with the children of the neighborhood than was the renowned child 
. poet, Eugene Field, at his home. The devotion of Mr. Riley to his aged parents, 
whose last days he made the happiest and brightest of their lives, has been repeatedly 
commented upon in the current notices of the poet. Mr. Riley has personally met 
more of the American people, perhaps, than any other living poet. He is constantly 
“on the wing.” For about eight months out of every twelve for the past several 
years he has been on the lecture platform, and there are few of the more intelligent 
class of people in the leading cities of America, who have not availed themselves, 
at one time or another, to the treat of listening to his inimitable recitation of his 
poems. His short vacation in the summer—“ his loafing days,” as he calls them— 
are spent with his relatives, and it is on these occasions that the genial poet is found 
at his best. 

-K>*- 


A BOY’S MOTHER* 


FROM “ POEMS HERE AT HOME.” 


Y mother she’s so good to me, 

Ef I wuz good as I could be, 

I couldn’t be as good—no, sir !— 
Can’t any boy be good as her ! 

She loves me when I’m glad er sad ; 
She loves me when I’m good er bad; 
An’, what’s a funniest thing, she says 
She loves me when she punishes. 



I don’t like her to punish me.— 

That don't hurt,—but it hurts to see 


Her cryin’.—Nen I cry; an’ nen 
We hath cry an’ be good again. 

She loves me when she cuts an’ sews 
My little cloak an’ Sund’y clothes; 
An’ when my Pa comes home to tea, 
She loves him most as much as me. 

She laughs an’ tells him all I said, 
An’ grabs me an’ pats my head; 

An’ I hug her, an’ hug my Pa, 

An’ love him purt’-nigh much as Ma. 


THOUGHTS ON THE LATE WAR* 


FROM “ POEMS HERE AT HOME." 



WAS for Union—you, ag’in’ it. 

’Pears like, to me, each side was winner, 
Lookin’ at now and all ’at’s in it. 

Le’ ’s go to dinner. 


The war, you know, ’s all done and ended, 

And ain’t changed no p’ints o’ the compass; 
Both North and South the health’s jes’ splendid 
As ’fore the rumpus. 


Le’ ’s kind o’ jes’ set down together 
And do some pardnership forgittin’— 
Talk, say, for instance, ’bout the weather, 
Or somepin’ fittin’. 


The old firms and the old plantations 
Still ockipies tlie’r old positions. 

Le’ ’s git back to old situations 

And old ambitions. 


io 


* By Permission of the Century Co. 




















146 


JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. 


Le’ 's let up on this blame’, infernal 
Tongue-lashin’ and lap-jacket vauntin’ 
And git back home to the eternal 

Ca m we’re a-wantin’. 


Peace kind o’ sort o’ suits my diet— 
When women does my cookin’ fur me, 
Ther’ was n’t overly much pie et 
Durin’ the army. 

40 * ■ - 


OUR HIRED GIRL* 

FROM “ POEMS HERE AT HOME.” 


UR hired girl, she’s ’Lizabuth Ann ; 

An’ she can cook best things to eat! 
She ist puts dough in our pie-pan, 

An’ pours in somepin’ ’at’s good an’ 
sweet; 

An’ nen she salts it all on top 
With cinnamon ; an’ nen she ’ll stop 
An’ stoop an’ slide it, ist as slow, 

In th’ old cook-stove, so’s’t wont slop 
An’ git all spilled; nen bakes it, so 
It ’s custard-pie, first thing you know ! 

An’ nen she ’ll say, 

“ Clear out o’ my way! 

They ’s time fer work, an’ time fer play! 
Take yer dough, an’ run, child, run ! 

Er I cain’t git no cookin’ done! ” 

When our hired girl ’tends like she’s mad, 

An’ says folks got to walk the chalk 
When she's around, er wisht they had ! 

I play out on our porch an’ talk 
To th’ Raggedy Man’t mows our lawn ; 

An’ he says, “ Whew ! ” an’ nen leans on 
His old crook-scythe, and blinks his eyes, 


An’ sniffs all ’round an’ says, “ I swawn! 

Ef my old nose don’t tell me lies, 

It ’pears like I smell custard-pies ! ” 

An’ nen he 'll say, 

“ Clear out o’ my way ! 

They ’s time fer work, an’ time fer play! 
Take yer dough, an’ run, child, run! 

Er she cain’t git no cookin’ done ! ” 

Wunst our hired girl, when she 
Got the supper, an’ we all et, 

An' it wuz night, an’ Ma an’ me 

An’ Pa went wher’ the “ Social ” met,— 
An’ nen when we come home, an’ see 
A light in the kitchen-door, an’ we 
Heerd a maccordeun, Pa says, “ Lan’- 
O’-Gracious ! who can her beau be?” 

An’ I marched in, an' ’Lizabuth Ann 
Wuz parchin’ corn fer the Raggedy Man ! 
Better say, 

“ Clear out o’ the way ! 

They’s time fer work, an’ time fer play ! 
Take the hint, an’ run, child, run ! 

Er we cain’t git no courtin’ done ! ” 



THE RAGGEDY MAN* 

FROM “ POEMS HERE AT HOME. 


THE Raggedy Man ! He works fer Pa; 
An’ he’s the goodest man ever you saw ! 
He comes to our house every day, 

An’ waters the horses, an’ feeds ’em hay; 
An’ he opens the shed—an’ we all ist laugh 
When he drives out our little old wobble-ly calf; 

An’ nen—ef our hired girl says he can — 

He milks the cow fer ’Lizabuth Ann.— 

Ain’t he a’ awful good Raggedy Man ? 

Raggedy ! Raggedy ! Raggedy Man ! 

W’y, the Raggedy Man—he’s ist so good, 

He splits the kindlin’ an’ chops the wood; 

An’ nen he spades in our garden, too, 

An’ does most things’t boys can’t do.— 

He clumbed clean up in our big tree 
An’ shooked a’ apple down fer me— 

An’ ’nother ’n’, too, fer ’Lizabuth Ann—- 
An’ ’nother ’n’, too, fer the Raggedy Man.— 

Ain’t he a’ awful kind Raggedy Man ? 

Raggedy ! Raggedy ! Raggedy Man ! 


An’ the Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes, 

An’ tells ’em, ef I be good, sometimes: 

Knows ’bout Giunts, an’ Griffuns, an’ Elves, 

An’ the Squidgicum-Squees ’at swallers therselves! 
An’, wite by the pump in our pasture-lot, 

He showed me the hole ’at the Wunks is got, 

’At lives ’way deep in the ground, an’ can 
Turn into me, er ’Lizabuth Ann ! 

Ain’t he a funny old Raggedy Man ? 

Raggedy ! Raggedy ! Raggedy Man ! 

The Raggedy Man—one time, when he 
Wuz makin’ a little bow’-n’-orry fer me, 

Says, “ When you ’re big like your Pa is, 

Air you go’ to keep a fine store like his— 

An’ be a rich merchunt—an’ wear fine clothes?— 
Er what air you go’ to be, goodness knows ? ” 

An’ nen he laughed at ’Lizabuth Ann, 

An’ I says, “’M go’ to be a Raggedy Man!— 

I ’m ist go’ to be a nice Raggedy Man ! ” 
Raggedy ! Raggedy ! Raggedy Man ! 


By permission of The Century Co. 
















FRANCIS BRET HARTE. 


THE POET OF THE MINING CAMP AND THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS. 



HE turbulent mining camps of California, with tlieir vicious hangers- 
on, have been embalmed for future generations by the unerring 
genius of Bret Harte, who sought to reveal the remnants of honor 
in man, and loveliness in woman, despite the sins and vices of the 
mining towns of our Western frontier thirty or forty years ago. His 
writings have been regarded with disfavor by a religious class of 
readers because of the frequent occurrence of rough phrases and even profanity 
which he employs in his descriptions. It should be remembered, however, that a 
faithful portrait of the conditions and people which he described could hardly have 
been presented in more polite language than that employed. 

Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, in 1839. His father was a scholar 
of ripe culture, and a teacher in the Albany Female Seminary. He died poor when 
Bret was quite young, consequently the education of his son was confined to the 
common schools of the city. When only seventeen years of age, young Harte, 
with his widowed mother, emigrated to California. Arriving in San Francisco he 
walked to the mines of Sonora and there opened a school which he taught for a 
short time. Thus began his self-education in the mining life which furnished the 
material for his early literature. After leaving his school he became a miner, and 
at odd times learned to set type in the office of one of the frontier papers. He wrote 
sketches of the strange life around him, set them up in type himself, and offered the 
proofs to the editor, believing that in this shape they would be more certain of 
acceptance. His aptitude with his pen secured him a position on the paper, and in 
the absence of the editor he once controlled the journal and incurred popular wrath 
for censuring a little massacre of Indians by the leading citizens of the locality, 
which came near bringing a mob upon him. 

The young adventurer,—for he was little else at this time,—also served as mounted 
messenger of an express company and as express agent in several mountain towns, 
which gave him a full knowledge of the picturesque features of mining life. In 
1857 he returned to San Francisco and secured a position as compositor on a weekly 
literary journal. Here again he repeated his former trick of setting up and sub¬ 
mitting several spirited sketches of mining life in type. These were accepted and 
soon earned him an editorial position on the “Golden Era.” After this he made 
many contributions to the daily papers and his tales of Western life began to attract 
attention in the East. In 1858, he married, which put an end to his wanderings. 

147 






























148 


FRANCIS BRET HARTE. 


He attempted to publish a newspaper of his own, “ The Californian,” which was 
bright and worthy to live, but failed for want of proper business management. 

In 1864 Mr. Harte was appointed Secretary of the United States Branch Mint at 
San Francisco, and during his six years of service in this position found leisure to 
write some of his popular poems, such as “ John Burns, of Gettysburg,” “ How Are 
You, Sanitary ? ” and others, which were generally printed in the daily newspapers. 
He also became editor of the “ Overland Monthly ” when it was founded in 1868, 
and soon made this magazine as great a favorite on the Atlantic as on the Pacific 
Coast, by his contribution to its columns of a series of sketches of California life 
which have won a permanent place in literature. Among these sketches are “ The 
Luck of Boaring Camp,” telling how a baby came to rule the hearts of a rough, 
dissolute gang of miners. It is said that this masterpiece, however, narrowly 
escaped the waste-basket at the hands of the proofreader, a woman, who, without 
noticing its origin, regarded it as utter trash. “The Outcast of Poker Flat,” 
“ Miggles,” “Tennessee’s Partner,” “An Idyl of Bed Gulch,” and many other 
stories which revealed the spark of humanity remaining in brutalized men and 
women, followed in rapid succession. 

Bret Harte was a man of the most humane nature, and sympathized deeply with 
the Indian and the Chinaman in the rough treatment they received at the hands of the 
early settlers, and his literature, no doubt, did much to soften and mollify the actions 
of those who read them—and it may be safely said that almost every one did, as he 
was about the only author at that time on the Pacific Slope and very popular. His 
poem, “ The Heathen Chinee,” generally called “Plain Language from Truthful 
James,” was a masterly satire against the hue and cry that the Chinese were shiftless 
and weak-minded settlers. This poem appeared in 1870 and was wonderfully 
popular. 

In the spring of 1871 the professorship of recent literature in the University of 
California was offered to Mr. Harte, on his resignation of the editorship of the 
“ Overland Monthly,” but he declined the proffer to try his literary fortunes in the 
more cultured East. He endeavored to found a magazine in Chicago, but his efforts 
failed, and he went to Boston to accept a position on the “ Atlantic Monthly,” since 
which time his pen has been constantly employed by an increasing demand from 
various magazines and literary journals. Mr. Harte has issued many volumes of 
prose and poetry, and it is difficult to say in which field he has won greater distinc¬ 
tion. Both as a prose writer and as a poet he has treated similar subjects with equal 
facility. His reputation was made, and his claim to fame rests upon his intuitive 
insight into the heart of our common humanity. A number of his sketches have 
been translated into French and German, and of late years he has lived much 
abroad, where he is, if any difference, more lionized than he was in his native 
country. 

From 1878 to 1885 Mr. Harte was United States Consul successively to Crefield 
, and Glasgow. Ferdinand Freiligraph, one of his German translators, and himself 
a poet, pays this tribute to his peculiar excellence: 

“ Nevertheless he remains what he is—the Californian and the gold-digger. But 
the gold for which he has dug, and which he found, is not the gold in the bed of 
rivers—not the gold in veins of mountains; it is the gold of love, of goodness, of 


FRANCIS BRET HARTE. 


149 


fidelity, of humanity, which even in rude and wild hearts—even under the rubbish 
of vices and sins—remains forever uneradicated from the human heart. That he 
there searched for this gold, that he found it there and triumphantly exhibited it to 
the world—that is his greatness and his merit.” 

His works as published from 1867 to 1890 include “ Condensed Novels,” 
“Poems,” “The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches,” “East and West 
Poems,” “Poetical Works,” “Mrs. Skaggs’ Husbands,” “Echoes of the Foothills,” 
“Tales of the Argonauts,” “Gabriel Conroy,” “Two Men of Sandy Bar,” “Thankful 
Blossom,” “Story of a Mine,” “Drift from Two Shores,” “The Twins of Table 
Mountain and Other Stories,” “In the Carquinez Woods,” “On the Frontier,” “By 
Shore and Ledge,” “Snowbound at Eagles,” “The Crusade of the Excelsior,” “A 
Phyllis of the Sierras.” One of Mr. Harte’s most popular late novels, entitled 
“Three Partners; or, The Big Strike on Heavy Tree Hill,” was published as a serial 
in 1897. Though written while the author was in Europe, the vividness of the 
description and the accurate delineations of the miner character are as strikingly 
real as if it had been produced by the author while residing in the mining country 
of his former Western home. 


SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS. 


RESIDE at Table Mountain, and my name 
is Truthful James; 

I am not up to small deceit or any sinful 
games; 

And Ill tell in simple language what I 
know about the row 

That broke up our Society upon the Stan- 
islow. 

But first, I would remark, that it is not a proper plan 

For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man, 

And, if a member don’t agree with his peculiar whim, 

To lay for that same member for to “ put a head ” on 
him. 

Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see 

Than the first six months’ proceedings of that same 
Society, 

Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones 

That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of 
Jones. 

Then Brown, he read a paper, and he reconstructed 
there, 

From those same bones, an animal that was extremely 
rare ; 

And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of 
the rules, 

Till he could prove that those same bones was one of 
his lost mules. 

Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, an' said he was 
at fault, 

It seems he had been trespassing on Jones’s family 
vault; 



He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown, 
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town. 


Now, I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent 
To say another is an ass.—at least, to all intent; 

Nor should the individual who happens to be meant 
Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent. 


Then Abner Dean, of Angel's, raised a point of order, 
when 

A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the 
abdomen ; 

And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up 
on the floor, 

And the subsequent proceedings interested him no 
more; 


For, in less time than I write it, every member did 
engage 

In a warfare with the remnants of the palaeozoic age; 

And the way they heaved those fossils, in their anger, 
was a sin, 

’Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head 
of Thompson in. 


And this is all I have to say of these improper games, 
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truth¬ 
ful James; 

And I’ve told in simple language what I knew about 
the row 

That broke up our society upon the Stanislow. 












150 


FRANCIS BRET HARTE. 


DICKENS IN CAMP. 


BOVP1 the pines the moon was slowly drifting, 
The river sang below ; 

The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting 
Their minarets of snow. 

The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted 
The ruddy tints of health 

On haggard face and form, that drooped and fainted 
In the fierce race for wealth 

’Till one arose, and from his pack’s scant treasure 
A hoarded volume drew, 

And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure 
To hear the tale anew. 



The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, 

Listened in every spray, 

While the whole camp with “ Nell ” on English 
meadows 

Wandered and lost their way. 

And so, in mountain solitudes, o’ertaken 
As by some spell divine, 

Their cares drop from them like the needles shaken 
From out the gusty pine. 

Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire, 

And he who wrought that spell; 

Ah ! towering pine and stately Kentish spire, 

Ye have one tale to tell ! 


And then, while shadows ’round them gathered faster, 
And as the firelight fell, 

He read aloud the book wherein the Master 
Had writ of “ Little Nell.” 


Lost is that camp ! but let its fragrant story 
Blend with the breath that thrills 
With hop-vines' incense, all the pensive glory 
That thrills the Kentish hills ; 


Perhaps ’twas boyish fancy,—for the reader 
Was the youngest of them all,— 

But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar 
A silence seemed to fall. 


And on that grave, where English oak and holly, 
And laurel-wreaths entwine, 

Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, 

This spray of Western pine ! 












EUGENE FIELD. 

THE CHILDREN’S FRIEND AND POET. 

the fourth day of November, 1895, there was many a sad home in 
the city of Chicago and throughout America. It was on that day 
that Eugene Field, the most congenial friend young children ever 
had among the literary men of America, died at the early age of 
forty-five. The expressions of regard and regret called out on all 
sides by this untimely death, made it clear that the character in 
which the public at large knew and loved Mr. Field best was that of the “Poet of 
Child Life.” What gives his poems their unequaled hold on the popular heart is 
their simplicity, warmth and genuineness. This quality they owe to the fact that 
Mr. Field almost lived in the closest and fondest intimacy with children. He had 
troops of them for his friends and it is said he wrote his child-poems directly under 
their suggestions and inspiration. 

We might fill far more space than is at our command in this volume relating ; 
incidents which go to show his fondness for little ones. It is said that on the day 
of his marriage, lie delayed the ceremony to settle a quarrel between some urchins 
who were playing marbles in the street. So long did he remain to argue the ques¬ 
tion with them that all might be satisfied, the time for the wedding actually passed 
and when sent for, he was found squatted down among them acting as peace-maker. 
It is also said that on one occasion he was invited by the noted divine, Dr. Gun- 
saulus, to visit his home. The children of the family had been reading Field’s 
poems and looked forward with eagerness to his coming. When he arrived, the 
first question he asked the children, after being introduced to them, was, “Where is 
the kitchen?” and expressed his desire to see it. Child-like, and to the embarrass¬ 
ment of the mother, they led him straight to the cookery where he seized upon the 
remains of a turkey which had been left from the meal, carried it into the dining¬ 
room, seated himself and made a feast with his little friends, telling them quaint 
stories all the while. After this impromptu supper, he spent the remainder of the 
evening singing them lullabies and reciting his verses. Naturally before he went 
away, the children had given him their whole hearts and this was the way with all 

children with whom he came into contact. 

The devotion so unfailing in his relation to children would naturally show itself 
in other relations. His devotion to his wife was most pronounced. In all the world 
she was the only woman he loved and he never wished to be away from her. Often 

151 


































152 


EUGENE FIELD. 


she accompanied him on his reading tours, the last journey they made together 
being in the summer of ’95 to the home of Mrs. Field’s girlhood. While his wife 
was in the company of her old associates, instead of joining them as they expected, 
he took advantage of her temporary absence, hired a carriage and visited all of the 
old scenes of their early associations during the happy time of their love-making. 

His association with his fellow-workers was equally congenial. No man who had 
ever known him felt the slightest hesitancy in approaching him. He had the happy 
faculty of making them always feel welcome. It was a common happening in 
the Chicago newspaper office for some tramp of a fellow, who had known him in* 
the days gone by, to walk boldly in and blurt out, as if confident in the power 
of the name bespoke—“ Is ’Gene Field here? I knew 'Gene Field in Denver, 
or I worked with ’Gene Field on the ‘ Kansas Citv Times.’ ” These were suffi- 
cient passwords and never failed to call forth the cheery voice from Field’s room— 
“That’s all right, show him in here, lie’s a friend of mine.” 

One of Field’s peculiarities with his own children was to nickname them. 
When his first daughter was born he called her “ Trotty,” and, although she is a 
grown-up woman now, her friends still call her “ Trotty.” The second daughter is 
called “ Pinny ” after the child opera “ Pinafore,” which was in vogue at the time 
she was born. Another, a son, came into the world when everybody was singing 
“Oh My! Ain’t She a Daisy.” Naturally this fellow still goes by the name of 
“Daisy.” Two other of’Mr. Field’s children are known as “ Googhy’.’ and 
“ Posy.” 

Eugene Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri, September 2, 1850. Part of his 
early life was passed in Vermont and Massachusetts. He was educated in a univer¬ 
sity in Missouri. From 1873 to 1883 he was connected with various newspapers 
in Missouri and Colorado. He joined the staff of the Chicago “ Daily News ” in 
1883 and removed to Chicago, where he continued to reside until his death, twelve 
years later. Of Mr. Field’s books, “ The Denver Tribune Primer ” was issued in 
1882; “Culture Garden” (1887); “Little Book of Western Friends” (1889); and 
“Little Book of Profitable Tales” (1889). 

Mr. Field was not only a writer of child verses, but wrote some first-class 
Western dialectic verse, did some translating, was an excellent newspaper correspon¬ 
dent, and a critic of no mean ability ; but he was too kind-hearted and liberal to 
chastise a brother severely who did not come up to the highest literary standard. 
He was a hard worker, contributing daily, during his later years, from one to three 
columns to the “ Chicago News,” besides writing more or less for the “ Syndicate 
Press ” and various periodicals. In addition to this, he was frequently traveling, 
and lectured or read from his own writings. Since his death, his oldest daughter, 
Miss Mary French Field (“Trotty”), has visited the leading cities throughout the 
country, delivering readings from her father’s works. The announcement of her 
appearance to read selections from the writings of her genial father is always 
liberally responded to by an appreciative public. 


EUGENE FIELD. 


r o 
,0d 


OUR TWO OPINIONS* 



S two wuz boys when we fell out— 

Nigh to the age uv my youngest now; 
Don’t rec’lect what ’twuz about, 

Some small diff’rence, I’ll allow, 

Lived next neighbors twenty years, 

A-hatin’ each other, me ’nd Jim— 

He havin’ his opinyin uv me 

’Nd I havin’ my opinyin uv him ! 


Grew up together, ’nd wouldn’t speak, 
Courted sisters, and marr’d ’em, too 
'Tended same ineetin’ house oncet a week, 
A-hatin’ each other, through ’nd through. 
But when Abe Linkern asked the West 
FT soldiers, we answered—me ’nd Jim— 
He havin’ his opinyin uv me 

’Nd I havin’ my opinyin uv him ! 


Down in Tennessee one night, 

Ther was sound uv firin’ fur away, 

’Nd the sergeant allowed ther’d be a fight 
With the Johnnie Rebs some time next day; 


’Nd as I was thinkin’ of Lizzie ’nd home, 

Jim stood afore me, long 'nd slim— 

He havin’ his opinyin uv me 

’Nd I havin’ my opinyin uv him! 

Seemed like we knew there wuz goin’ to be 
Serious trouble f’r me ’nd him— 

Us two shuck hands, did Jim ’nd me, 

But never a word from me or Jim ! 

He went his way, and I went mine, 

’Nd into the battle’s roar went we— 

I havin’ my opinyin uv Jim 

’Nd he havin’ his opinyin uv me! 

Jim never come back from the war again, 
But I haint forgot that last, last night 
When waitin’ f’r orders, us two men 

Made up and shuck hands, afore the fight; 
’Nd, after it all, it’s soothin’ to know 
That here I be, ’nd yonder’s Jim— 

He havin’ his opinyin uv me 

’Nd I havin’ my opinyin uv him ! 


-#<>♦■ 


LULLABY* 


AIR is the castle up on the hill— 
Hushaby, sweet my own ! 

The night is fair and the waves are still, 
And the wind is singing to you and me 
In this lowly home beside the sea— 
Hushaby, sweet my own ! 

On yonder hill is store of wealth— 

Hushaby, sweet my own ! 

And revellers drink to a little one’s health; 
But you and I bide night and day 
For the other love that has sailed away— 
Hushaby, sweet my own ! 

See not, dear eyes, the forms that creep 
Ghostlike, 0 my own ! 

Out of the mists of the murmuring deep ; 



Oh, see them not and make no cry, 

’Till the angels of death have passed us by— 
Hushaby, sweet my own ! 

Ah, little they reck of you and me— 
Hushaby, sweet my own ! 

In our lonely home beside the sea; 

They seek the castle up on the hill, 

And there they will do their ghostly will— 
Hushaby, 0 my own ! 

Here by the sea, a mother croons 
“ Hushaby, sweet my own ; ” 

In yonder castle a mother swoons 

While the angels go down to the misty deep, 

Bearing a little one fast asleep— 

Hushaby, sweet my own ! 


-♦O*- 


A DUTCH LULLABY * 



YNKEN, Blynken, and Nod one night 
Sailed off in a wooden shoe— 
Sailed on a river of misty light 
Into a sea of dew. 


“ Where are you going, and what do you wish ? ” 
The old moon asked the three. 

“ We have to come to fish for the herring-fish 
That live in this beautiful sea: 


* F rom 


“A Little Book of Western Verse” (1889). Copyrighted by Eugene Field, and published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. 


























154 


EUGENE FIELD*. 


Nets of silver and gold have we, 

Said Wynken, 

Blynken, 

And Nod. 

The old moon laughed and sung a song, 

And they rocked in the wooden shoe, 

And the wind that sped them all night long 
Ruffled the waves of dew; 

The little stars were the herring-fish 
That lived in the beautiful sea; 

“Now cast your nets wherever you wish, 

But never afeared are we ”— 

So cried the stars to the fishermen three, 
Wynken, 

Blynken, 

And Nod. 

All night long their nets they threw 
For the fish in the twinkling foam, 

Then down from the sky came the wooden shoe, 
Bringing the fishermen home. 


’Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed 
As if it could not be ; 

And some folks thought ’twas a dream they’d dreamed 
Of sailing that beautiful sea. 

But I shall name you the fishermen three: 
Wynken, 

Blynken, 

And Nod. 

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, 

And Nod is a little head,' 

And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies 
Is a wee one’s trundle-bed ; 

So shut your eyes while mother sings 
Of wonderful sights that be, 

And you shall see the beautiful things 
As you rock in the misty sea, 

Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three— 
Wynken, 

Blynken, 

And Nod. 


O* 


THE NORSE LULLABY* 


HE sky is dark and the hills are white 
As the storm-king speeds from the north 
to-night, 

And this is the song the storm-king sings, 
over the world his cloak he flings: 

“ Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep ! ” 
rustles his wings and gruffly sings: 

“ Sleep, little one, sleep ! ” 

On yonder mountain-side a vine 
Clings at the foot of a mother pine; 

The tree bends over the trembling thing 


Western Verse” ( 1889 ). 

And only the vine can hear her sing: 

“ Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep— 
What shall you fear when I am here ? 
Sleep, little one, sleep.” 

The king may sing in his bitter flight, 
The tree may croon to the vine to-night, 
But the little snowflake at my breast 
Liketh the song I sing the best: 

“ Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep ; 
Weary thou art, anext my heart, 

Sleep, little one, sleep.” 


From “A Little Book of 



As 

He 


* Copyright, Charles Scribner’s Sons. 









WILL CARLETON. 


AUTHOR OF “ BETSY AND I ARE OUT.” 



EW writers of homely verse have been more esteemed than Will 
Carleton. His poems are to be found in almost every book of selec¬ 
tions for popular reading. They are well adapted to recitation and 
are favorites with general audiences. With few exceptions they 
are portraitures of the humorous side of rural life and frontier 
scenes; but they are executed with a vividness and truth to nature 
that does credit to the author and insures their preservation as faithful portraits of 
social conditions and frontier scenes and provincialisms which the advance of educa¬ 
tion is fast relegating to the past. 

Will Carleton was born in Hudson, Michigan, October 21, 1845. His father 
was a pioneer settler who came from New Hampshire. Young Carleton remained 
at home on the farm until he was sixteen years of age, attending the district school 
in the winters and working on the farm during: the summers. At the age of six- 
teen he became a teacher in a country school and for the next four years divided his 
time between teaching, attending school and working as a farm-hand, during which 
time he also contributed articles in both prose and verse to local papers. In 1865 
he entered Hillsdale College, Michigan, from which he graduated in 1869. Since 
1870 he has been engaged in journalistic and literary work and has also lectured 
frequently in the West. It was during his early experiences as a teacher in “board¬ 
ing round” that he doubtless gathered the incidents which are so graphically 
detailed in his poems. 

There is a homely pathos seldom equalled in the two selections “Betsy and I Are 
Out” and “How Betsy and I Made Up” that have gained for them a permanent 
place in the affections of the reading public. In other of his poems, like “Makin’ 
an Editor Outen Him,” “A Lightning Rod Dispenser,” “The Christmas Baby,” 
etc., there is a rich vein of humor that has given them an enduring popularity. 
“The First Settler’s Story ” is a most graphic picture of pioneer life, portraying the 
hardships which early settlers frequently endured and in which the depressing 
homesickness often felt for the scenes of their childhood and the far-away East is 
pathetically told. 

Mr. Carleton’s first volume of poems appeared in 1871, and was printed for 
private distribution. “Betsy and I Are Out” appeared in 1872 in the “Toledo 
Blade.” It was copied in “ Harper’s Weekly,” and illustrated. This was really the 
author’s first recognition in literary circles. In 1873 appeared a collection of his 


155 


























156 


WILL CARLETON. 


poems entitled “Farm Ballads,” including the now famous selections, “Out of the 
Old House, Nancy,” “Over the Hills to the Poorhouse,” “Gone With a Handsomer 
Man,” and “How Betsy and I Made Up.” Other well-known volumes by the same 
author are entitled “Farm Legends,” “Young Folk’s Centennial Bhymes,” “Farm 
Festivals,” and “City Ballads.” 

In his preface to the first volume of his poems Mr. Carleton modestly apologizes 
for whatever imperfections they may possess in a manner which gives us some 
insight into his literary methods. “These poems,” he writes, “have been written 
under various, and in some cases difficult, conditions: in the open air, with team 
afield; in the student’s den, with ghosts of unfinished lessons hovering gloomily 
about; amid the rush and roar of railroad travel, which trains of thought are not 
prone to follow; and in the editor’s sanctum, where the dainty feet of the muses do 
not often deign to tread.” 


But Mr. Carleton does not need to apologize. He has the true poetic instinct. 
His descriptions are vivid, and as a narrative versifier he has been excelled by few, 
if indeed any depicter of Western farm life. 

Will Carleton has also written considerable prose, which has been collected and 
published in book form, but it is his poetical works which have entitled him to 
jmblic esteem, and it is for these that he will be longest remembered in literature. 


BETSY AND 


RAW up the papers, lawyer, and make 'em 
good and stout, 

For things at home are cross-ways, and 
Betsy and I are out,— 

We who have worked together so long as 
man and wife 

Must pull in single harness the rest of our 
nat’ral life. 

“ What is the matter,” says you ? I swan it’s hard to 
tell! 

Most of the years behind us we've passed by very 
well; 

I have no other woman—she has no other man ; 

Only we’ve lived together as long as ever we can. 

So I have talked with Betsy, and Betsy has talked 
with me ; 

And we’ve agreed together that we can never agree ; 

Not that we’ve catched each other in any terrible 
crime; 

We’ve been a gatherin’ this for years, a little at a 
time. 

There was a stock of temper we both had for a start; 

Although we ne’er suspected ’twould take us two 
apart; 


I ARE OUT* 

I had my various failings, bred in the flesh and bone, 

And Betsy, like all good women, had a temper of 
her own. 

The first thing, I remember, whereon we disagreed, 

Was somethin’ concerning heaven—a difference in our 
creed ; 

We arg’ed the thing at breakfast—we arg’ed the 
thing at tea— 

And the more we arg'ed the question, the more we 
couldn’t agree. 

And the next that I remember was when we lost a 
cow ; 

She had kicked the bucket, for certain—the question 
was only—How ? 

I held my opinion, and Betsy another had ; 

And when we were done a talkin’, we both of us 
was mad. 

And the next that I remember, it started in a joke; 

But for full a week it lasted and neither of us spoke. 

And the next was when I fretted because she broke 
a bowl; 

And she said I was mean and stingy, and hadn’t any 
soul. 



*From “ Farm Ballads.” Copyright 1873, 1882, by Harper & Brothers. 








WILL CARLETON. 


157 


And so the thing kept workin’, and all the self-same 
way; 

Always somethin to ar’ge and something sharp to 
say — 

And down on us came the neighbors, a couple o’ 
dozen strong. 

And lent their kindest sarvice to help the thing along. 

And there have been days together—and many a 
w r eary week— 

W hen both of us were cross and spunky, and both 
too proud to speak ; 

And l have been thinkin’ and thinkin', the whole of 
the summer and fall, 

If I can’t live kind with a woman, why, then I won't 
at all. 

And so I’ve talked with Betsy, and Betsy has talked 
with me; 

And we have agreed together that we can never agree ; 

And what is hers shall be hers, and what is mine shall 
be mine ; 

And I'll put it in the agreement, and take it to her 
to sign. 

Write on the paper, lawyer—the very first para¬ 
graph— 

Of all the farm and livestock, she shall have her half; 

For she has helped to earn it through many a weary 
day, 

And it’s nothin’ more than justice that Betsy has her 
pay. 

Give her the house and homestead ; a man can thrive 
and roam, 

But women are wretched critters, unless they have a 
home. 

And I have always determined, and never failed to 
say, 

That Betsy never should want a home, if I was taken 
away. 

There’s a little hard money besides, that’s drawin’ 
tol’rable pay, 

A couple of hundred dollars laid by for a rainy day,— 

.Safe in the hands of good men, and easy to get at; 

Put in another clause there, and give her all of that. 


I see that you are smiling, sir, at my givin’ her so 
much ; 

Yes, divorce is cheap, sir, but I take no stock in such ; 
True and fair I married her, when she was blythe 
and young, 

And Betsy was always good to me exceptin’ with her 
tongue. 

o 

When I was young as you, sir, and not so smart, 
perhaps, 

For me she mittened a lawyer, and several other chaps; 
And all of ’em was flustered, and fairly taken down, 
And for a time I was counted the luckiest man in town. 

Once when I had a fever—I won’t forget it soon— 

I was hot as a basted turkey and crazy as a loon— 
Never an hour went by me when she was out of sight; 
She nursed me true and tender, and stuck to me day 
and night. 

And if ever a house was tidy, and ever a kitchen clean, 
Her house and kitchen was tidy as any I ever seen, 
And I don’t complain of Betsy or any of her acts, 
Exceptin’ when we’ve quarreled, and told each other 
facts. 

So draw up the paper, lawyer; and I’ll go home to¬ 
night, 

And read the agreement to her, and see if it’s all right; 
And then in the morning I’ll sell to a tradin’ man I 
know— 

And kiss the child that was left to us, and out in the 
world I’ll go. 

And one thing put in the paper, that first to me 
didn’t occur; 

That when I am dead at last she will bring me back 
to her, 

And lay me under the maple we planted years ago, 
When she and I was happy, before we quarreled so. 

And when she dies, I wish that she would be laid by me; 
And lyin’ together in silence, perhaps we ll then agree; 
And if ever we meet in heaven, I wouldn’t think it 
queer 

If we loved each other the better because we’ve 
quarreled here. 

♦O*- 


GONE WITH A HANDSOMER MAN* 


(from “farm ballads.”) 


John. 



’YE worked in the field all day, a plowin 
the “ stony streak ; ” 

I’ve scolded my team till I’m hoarse; 

I’ve tramped till my legs are weak; 


I’ve choked a dozen swears, (so’s not to tell Jane 
fibs,) 

When the plow-pint struck a stone, and the handles 
punched my ribs. 


) 

* Copyright, 1873, 1882, by Harper & Brothers. 











158 


WILL CARLETON. 


I’ve put my team in the barn, and rubbed their 
sweaty coats; 

I’ve fed ’em a heap of hay and half a bushel of oats; 

And to see the way they eat makes me like eatin' 
feel, 

And Jane won’t say to-night that I don’t make out a 
meal. 

Well said ! the door is locked ! out here she’s left the 

key, 

Under the step, in a place known only to her and me ; 

I wonder who’s dyin' or dead, that she’s hustled off 
pell-mell; 

But here on the table’s a note, and probably this will 
tell. 

Good God ! my wife is gone ! my w 7 ife is gone astray! 

The letter it says, “ Good-bye, for I’m a going away; 

I’ve lived with you six months, John, and so far I’ve 
been true; 

But I’m going away to-day with a handsomer man 
than you.” 

A lian’somer man than me! Why, that ain’t much 
to say; 

There's han’somer men than me go past here every 
day. 

There’s han’somer men than me—I ain’t of the 
han’some kind ; 

But a lovener man than I was, I guess she ll never 
find. 

Curse her! curse her! I say, and give my curses wings! 

May the words of love I’ve spoken be changed to 
scorpion stings! 

Oh, she filled my heart with joy, she emptied my 
heart of doubt, 

And now, with a scratch of a pen, she lets my heart’s 
blood out! 

Curse her! curse her! say I, she’ll some time rue 
this day; 

She’ll some time learn that hate is a game that two 
can play; 

And long before she dies she’ll grieve she ever was 
born, 

And I’ll plow her grave with hate, and seed it down 
to scorn. 

As sure as the world goes on, there'll come a time 
when she 

Will read the devilish heart of that han’somer man 
than me; 

And there’ll be a time when he will find, as others do, 

That she who is false to one, can be the same with 
two. 

And when her face grows pale, and when her eyes 
grow dim, 


And when he is tired of her and she is tired of him, 

She'll do what she ought to have done, and coolly 
count the cost; 

And then she ll see things clear, and know what she 
has lost. 

And thoughts that are now asleep will wake up in 
her mind, 

And she will mourn and cry for what she has left 
behind ; 

And maybe she’ll sometimes long for me—for me— 
but no! 

I’ve blotted her out of my heart, and I will not have 
it so. 

And yet in her girlish heart there was somethin’ or 
other she had 

That fastened a man to her, and wasn’t entirely bad; 

And she loved me a little, I think, although it didn’t 
last; 

But I mustn’t think of these things—I’ve buried ’em 
in the past. 

I'll take my hard words back, nor make a bad matter 
worse; 

She’ll have trouble enough ; she shall not have my 
curse; 

But I ll live a life so square—and I well know that I 

can,— 

That she always will sorry be that she went with that 
han’somer man. 

Ah, here is her kitchen dress ! it makes my poor eyes 
blur; 

It seems when I look at that, as if ’twas holdin’ her. 

And here are her week-day shoes, and there is her 
week-day hat, 

And yonder’s her weddin’ gown ; I wonder she didn’t 
take that. 

Twas only this mornin’ she came and called me her 

“ dearest dear,” 

And said I was makin’ for her a regular paradise 
here ; 

0 God ! if you want a man to sense the pains of hell, 

Before you pitch him in just keep him in heaven a 
spell! 

Good-bye! I wish that death had severed us two 
apart. 

You’ve lost a worshiper here, you’ve crushed a lovin’ 
heart. 

I’ll worship no woman again ; but I guess I’ll learn 
to pray, 

And kneel as you used to kneel, before you run aw r ay. 

And if I thought I could bring my words on Heaven 
to bear, 




WILL CARLETON. 


159 


And if I thought I had some little influence there, 

I would pray that I might be, if it only could be so, 

As happy and gay as I was a half-hour ago. 

Jane (entering'). 

Why, John, what a litter here ! you’ve thrown things 
all around ! 

Come, what’s the matter now ? and what have you 
lost or found ? 

And here’s my father here, a waiting for supper, too; 

I’ve been a riding with him—he’s that “ handsomer 
man than you.” 

Ha! ha! Pa, take a seat, while I put the kettle on, 

And get things ready for tea, and kiss my dear old 
John. 

Why, John, you look so strange! come, what has 
crossed your track ? 


I was only a joking, you know; I’m willing to take 
it back. 

John (aside). 

Well, now, if this ain't a joke, with rather a bitter 
cream ! 

It seems as if I’d woke from a mighty ticklish dream; 

And I think she “ smells a rat,” for she smiles at me 
so queer, 

I hope she don’t; good gracious! I hope that they 
didn’t hear! 

’Twas one of her practical drives—she thought I’d 
understand! 

But I’ll never break sod again till I get the lay of the 
land. 

But one thing’s settled with me—to appreciate heaven 
well, 

’Tis good for a man to have some fifteen minutes of 
hell. 







JOAQUIN MILLER. 

“the poet of the sierras.” 

N the year 1851, a farmer moved from the Wabash district in Indiana 
to the wilder regions of Oregon. In his family was a rude, untaught 
boy of ten or twelve years, bearing the unusual name of Cincin- 
natus Hiner Miller. This boy worked with his father on the farm 
until he was about fifteen years of age, when he abandoned the 
family log-cabin in the Willamette Valley of his Oregon home to 
try this fortune as a gold miner. 

A more daring attempt was seldom if ever undertaken by a fifteen year old 
youth. It was during the most desperate period of Western history, just after the 
report of the discovery of gold had caused the greatest rush to the Pacific slope. 
A miscellaneous and turbulent population swarmed over the country; and, “armed 
to the teeth” prospected upon streams and mountains. The lawless, reckless life 
of these gold-hunters—millionaires to-day and beggars to-morrow—deeming it a 
virtue rather than a crime to have taken life in a brawl—was, at once, novel, 
picturesque and dramatic.—Such conditions furnished great possibilities for a poet 
or novelist—It was an era as replete with a reality of thrilling excitement as 
that furnished by the history and mythology of ancient Greece to the earlier 
Greeks poets. 

It was into this whirlpool that the young, untaught—but observant and daring- 
farmer lad threw himself, and when its whirl was not giddy and fast enough for 
him, or palled upon his more exacting taste for excitement and daring adventure, 
he left it after a few months, and sought deeper and more desperate wilds. With 
Walker he became a filibuster and went into Nicaragua.—He became in turn an 
astrologer, a Spanish vaquero , and, joining the wild Indians, was made a Sachem. 

For five years he followed these adventurous wanderings; then as suddenly as 
he had entered the life he deserted it, and, in 1860 the prodigal returned home to 
his father’s cabin in Oregon. In his right arm he carried a bullet, in I is right 
thigh another, and on many parts of his body were the scars left by Inuian ar¬ 
rows. Shortly after returning home he begun the study of law and was admitted 
to practice within a few months in Lane County, Oregon; but the gold fever or 
spirit of adventure took possession of him again and in 1861 we find him in the 
gold mines of Idaho; but the yellow metal did not come into his “Pan” sufficiently 
fast and he gave it up to become an express messenger in the mining district. A 
few months later he was back in Oregon where he started a Democratic Newspaper 

160 















































JOAQUIN MILLER. 


1GI 


at, Eugene City which he ran long enough to get acquainted with a poetical contri¬ 
butor, Miss Minnie Myrtle, whom he married in 1862—in his usual short-order way 

ot doing things—after an acquaintance of three days. Where “Joaquin” Miller_ 

for he was now called “Joaquin” after a Spanish brigand whom he had defended— 
got his education is a mystery; but through the years of wandering, even in boy¬ 
hood, he was a rhymester and his verses now began to come fast in the columns of 
his paper. 

In 1862, after his marriage he resumed the practice of law, and, in 1866, at the 
age of twenty-five, was elected Judge ot Grant County. This position he held for 



JOAQUIN miller’s STUDY, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. 


four years during which time he wrote much poetry. One day with his usual 
“ suddenness ” he abandoned his wife and his country and sailed for London to seek 
a publisher. At first he was unsuccessful, and had to print a small volume privately. 
This introduced him to the friendship of English writers and his “ Songs of the 
Sierras” was issued in 1871. Naturally these poems were faulty in style and called 
forth strong adverse criticism; but the tales they told were glowing and passionate, 
and the wild and adventurous life they described was a new revelation in the world 
of song, and, verily, whatever the austere critic said, “ The common people heard him 
gladly ” and his success became certain. Thus encouraged Miller returned to Cali¬ 
fornia, visited the tropics and collected material for another work which he published 
















162 


JOAQUIN MILLEK. 


in London in 1873 entitled “Sunland Songs.” Succeeding, the “ Songs of the 
Desert” appeared in 1875; “Songs of Italy” 1878; Songs of the Mexican Seas 
1887. Later he has published “ With Walker in Nicaragua ” and he is also author 
of a play called “ The Danites,” and of several prose works relating to life in the 
West among which are “The Danites in the Sierras,” “Shadows of Shasta” and 
‘ 49, or “ The Gold-seekers of the Sierras.” 

The chief excellencies of Miller’s works are his gorgeous pictures of the gigantic 
scenery of the Western mountains. In this sense he is a true poet. As compared 
with Bret Harte, while Miller has the finer poetic perception of the two, he does not 
possess the dramatic power nor the literary skill of Harte; nor does he seem to 
recognize the native generosity and noble qualities which lie hidden beneath the 
vicious lives of outlaws, as the latter reveals it in his writings. After all the ques¬ 
tion arises which is the nearer the truth ? Harte is about the same age as Miller, 
lived among the camps at about the same time, but he was not, to use a rough ex¬ 
pression, “ one of the gang,” was not so pronouncedly “ on the inside ” as was his 
brother poet. He never dug in the mines, he was not a filibuster, nor an Indian 
Sachem. All these and more Miller was, and perhaps he is nearer the plumb line 
of truth in his delineations after all. 

Mr. Miller’s home is on the bluffs overlooking the San Francisco Bay in sight of 
the Golden Gate. In July, 1897, he joined the gold seekers in the Klondike re¬ 
gions of Alaska. 


THOUGHTS OF MY WESTERN HOME. 


WRITTEN IN ATHENS. 


IERRAS, and eternal tents 

Of snow that flashed o’er battlements 
Of mountains ! My land of the sun, 
Am I not true ? have I not done 
All things for thine, for thee alone, 

0 sun-land, sea-land, thou mine own? 

From other loves and other lands, 

As true, perhaps, as strong of hands, 

Have I not turned to thee and thine, 

0 sun-land of the palm and pine, 

And sung thy scenes, surpassing skies, 

Till Europe lifted up her face 
And marveled at thy matchless grace, 



With eager and inquiring eyes ? 

Be my reward some little place 
To pitch my tent, some tree and vine 
Where I may sit above the sea, 

And drink the sun as drinking wine, 
And dream, or sing some songs of thee; 
Or days to climb to Shasta’s dome 
Again, and be with gods at home. 

Salute my mountains—clouded Hood, 

Saint Helen’s in its sea of wood_ 

Where sweeps the Oregon, and where 
White storms are in the feathered fir. 


MOUNT 

0 lord all Godland ! lift the brow 
Familiar to the noon,—to top 
The universal world,—to prop 
The hollow heavens up,—to vow 
Stern constancy with stars,—to keep 
Eternal ward while cons sleep ; 

To tower calmly up and touch 
God’s purple garment—hems that sweep 
The cold blue north ! Oh, this were much ! 


SHASTA. 

Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt 
I knew thee in my glorious youth, 

I loved thy vast face, white as truth, 

I stood where thunderbolts were wont 
To smite thy Titan-fashioned front. 

And heard rent mountains rock and roll. 

I saw thy lightning’s gleaming rod 
Reach forth and write on heaven’s scroll 
The awful autograph of God ! 














JOAQUIN MILLER. 


163 


KIT CARSON’S RIDE. 



UN ? Now you bet you; I rather guess so. 
But he’s blind as a badger. Whoa, Pache 
boy, whoa! 

No, you wouldn’t think so to look at his 
eyes, 

But he is badger blind, and it happened this wise ;— 

We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels, 

Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride. 

“ Forty full miles if a foot to ride, 

Forty full miles if a foot and the devils 
Of red Camanches are hot on the track 
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down 
Soon, very soon,’’ muttered bearded old Revels 
As he peered at the sun, lying low on his back, 
Holding first to his lasso ; then he jerked at his steed, 
And sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around, 
And then dropped, as if shot, with his ear to the 
ground,— 

Then again to his feet and to me, to my bride, 

While his eyes were like fire, his face like a shroud, 
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud, 

And his voice loud and shrill, as if blown from a 
reed,— 

“ Pull, pull in your lassos, and bridle to steed, 

And speed, if ever for life you would speed ; 

And ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride, 
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire, 

And feet of wild horses, hard flying before 
I hear like a sea breaking hard on the shore ; 

While the buffalo come like the surge of the sea, 
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three 
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire.” 

We drew in the lassos, seized saddle and rein, 

Threw them on, sinched them on, sinched them over 


again 


And again drew the girth, cast aside the macheer, 
Cut away tapidaros, loosed the sash from its fold, 
Cast aside the catenas red and spangled with gold. 
And gold-mounted Colts, true companions for years, 
Cast the red silk serapes to the wind in a breath 
And so bared to the skin sprang all haste to the 
horse. 

Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall, 

Not a kiss from my bride, not a look or low call 
Of love-note or courage, but on o’er the plain 
So steady and still, leaning low to the mane, 

With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein, 
Rode we on, rode we three, rode we gra nose and 
nose, 

Reaching long, breathing loud, like a creviced wind 
blows, 

Yet we spoke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer, 


There was work to be done, there was death in the air, 
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all. 

Gray nose to gray nose and each steady mustang 
Stretched neck and stretched nerve till the hollow 
earth rang 

And the foam from the flank and the croup and the 
neck 

Flew around like the spray on a storm-driven deck. 
Twenty miles ! thirty miles—a dim distant speck— 
Then a long reaching line and the Brazos in sight. 
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight. 

I stood in my stirrup and looked to my right, 

But Revels was gone ; I glanced by my shoulder 
And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping 
Hard on his breast, and his naked breast stooping 
Low down to the mane as so swifter and bolder 
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire. 

To right and to left the black buffalo came, 

In miles and in millions, rolling on in despair, 

With their beards to the dust and black tails in the 
air. 

As a terrible surf on a red sea of flame 
Rushing on in the rear, reaching high, reaching 
higher, 

And he rode neck to neck to a buffalo bull. 

The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full 
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire 
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings loud 
And unearthly and up through its lowering cloud 
Came the flash of his eyes like a half-hidden fire, 

! While his keen crooked horns through the storm of 
his mane 

Like black lances lifted and lifted again ; 

And I looked but this once, for the fire licked 
through, 

And he fell and was lost, as we rode two and two. 

I looked to my left then, and nose, neck, and shoulder 
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs; 

And up through the black blowing veil of her hair 
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes 
With a longing and love, yet look of despair, 

And a pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her r 
And flames reaching far for her glorious hair. 

Her sinking steed faltered, his eager ears fell 
To and fro and unsteady, and all the neck's swell 
Did subside and recede, and the nerves fell as dead. 
Then she saw that my own steed still lorded his 
head 

With a look of delight, for this Pache, you see, 

Was her father’s and once at the South Santafee 
Had won a whole herd, sweeping everything down 
| In a race where the world came to run for the crown ; 
And so when I won the true heart of my bride,— 













164 


JOAQUIN MILLER. 


My neighbor’s and deadliest enemy’s child, 

And child of the kingly war-chief of his tribe,— 
She brought me this steed to the border the night 
She met Revels and me in her perilous flight, 

From the lodge of the chief to the north Brazos 
side; 

And said, so half guessing of ill as she smiled, 

As if jesting, that I, and I only, should ride 
The fleet-footed Pache, so if kin should pursue 
I should surely escape without other ado 
Than to ride, without blood, to the north Brazos side, 
And await her,—and wait till the next hollow moon 
Hung her horn in the palms, when surely and soon 
And swift she would join me, and all would be well 
Without bloodshed or word. And now as she fell 
From the front, and went down in the ocean of fire, 
The last that I saw w T as a look of delight 
That I should escape,—a love,—a desire.— 

Yet never a word, not a look of appeal,— 

Lest I should reach hand, should stay hand or stay 
heel 

One instant for her in my terrible flight. 

Then the rushing of fire rose around me and under, 

O 7 

And the howling of beast like the sound of thunder.— 
Beasts burning and blind and forced onward and over. 
As the passionate flame reached around them and 
wove her 

Hands in their hair, and kissed hot till they died,— 


Till they died with a wild and a desolate moan, 

As a sea heart-broken on the hard brown stone, 

And into the Brazos I rode all alone— 

All alone, save only a horse long-limbed, 

And blind and bare and burnt to the skin. 

Then just as the terrible sea came in 
And tumbled its thousands hot into the tide, 

Till the tide blocked up and the swift stream 
brimmed 

In eddies, we struck on the opposite side. 

“Sell Pache—blind Pache? Now, mister! look 
here ! 

You have slept in my tent and partook of my cheer 
Many days, many days, on this rugged frontier,” 

For the ways they were rough and Comanches were 
near; 

“ But you’d better pack up, sir! That tent is too 
small 

For us two after this! Has an old mountaineer, 

Ho you book-men believe, get no tum-tum at all ? 

Sell Pache ! You buy him ! a bag full of gold ! 

You show him ! Tell of him the tale I have told ! 
Why he bore me through fire, and is blind and is 
old ! 

Now pack up your papers, and get up 
and spin 

To them cities you tell of. Blast you and 

your tin !” 

O* * - 


JOAQUIN MILLER’S ALASKA LETTER. 

As a specimen of this author’s prose writing and style, we present the following extract from a syndicate 
letter clipped from the “Philadelphia Inquirer.” 


Head of Lake Bennett , Alaska , August 2, 1897. 

^5*^1 WRITE by the bank of what is already a 
big river, and at the fountain head of the 

mighty Yukon, the second if not the first 
of American rivers. We have crossed the summit, 
passed the terrible Chilkoot Pass and Crater Lake 
and Long Lake and Lideman Lake and now I sit 
down to tell the story of the past, while the man who 
is to take me up the river six hundred miles to the 
Klondike rows his big scow, full of cattle, brought 
from Seattle. 

* * * * * 

TIIE BEAUTY AND GRANDEUR OF CHILKOOT PASS. 

All the pictures that had been painted by word, 
all on easel, or even in imagination of Napoleon and 
his men climbing up the Alps, are but childish play¬ 
things in comparison with the grandeur of Chilkoot 
Pass. Starting up the steep ascent, we raised a 
shout and it ran the long, steep and tortuous line that 
reached from a bluff above us, and over and up till 
it lost itself in the clouds. And down to us from the 


i clouds, the shout and cry of exultation of those brave 
conquerers came back, and only died away when the 
distance made it possible to be heard no longer. And 
’ now we began to ascend. 

It was not so hard as it seemed. The stupendous 
granite mountain, the home of the avalanche and the 
father of glaciers, melted away before us as we 
ascended, and in a single hour of brisk climbing we 
stood against the summit or rather between the big 
granite blocks that marked the summit. As I said 
before, the path is not so formidable as it looked, and 
it is not half so formidable as represented, but mark you, 
it is no boy’s play, no man’s play. It is a man’s and 
a big strong man's honest work, and takes strength of 
body and nerve of soul. 

Right in the path and within ten feet of a snow 
bank that has not perished for a thousand years, I 
picked and ate a little strawberry, and as I rested and 
roamed about a bit, looking down into the brightly 
blue lake that made the head waters of the Yukon, 
I gathered a little sun flower, a wild hyacinth and a 
wild tea blossom for my buttonhole. 















■ 













































































































































































































































* 


































. 





























SIX TYPICAL A MLR; CAN NOVELISTS 



















JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 

THE WALTER SCOTT OF AMERICA. 


R first American novelist, and to the present time perhaps the only 
American novelist whose fame is permanently established among 
foreigners, is James Fenimore Cooper. While Washington Irving, 
our first writer of short stories, several years Cooper’s senior, was so 
strikingly popular in England and America, Cooper’s “Spy” and 
“Pilot” and the “Last of the Mohicans” went beyond the bounds 
of the English language, and the Spaniard, the Frenchman, the German, the Italian 
and others had placed him beside their own classics and were dividing honors be¬ 
tween him and Sir Walter Scott; and it was they who first called him the Walter 
Scott of America. Nor was this judgment altogether wrong. For six or seven 
years Scott’s Waverly Novels had been appearing, and his “ Ivanlioe,” which was 
first published in 1820—the first historical novel of the world—had given the clue to 
Cooper for “ The Spy,” which appeared in 1821, the first historical novel of America, 
Both books were translated into foreign languages by the same translators, and made 
for their respective authors quick and lasting fame. 

James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 
1789—the same year that George Washington was inaugurated President of the 
United States. His father owned many thousand acres of wild land on the head 
waters of the Susquehanna River in New York, and while James was an infant 
removed thither and built a stately mansion on Otsego Lake, near the point where 
the little river issues forth on its journey to the sea. Around Otsego Hall, as it was 
called, the village of Cooperstown grew up. In this wilderness young Cooper 
passed his childhood, a hundred miles beyond the advancing lines of civilization. 
Along the shores of the beautiful lake, shut in by untouched forests, or in the woods 
themselves, which rose and fell unbroken—except here and there by a pioneer’s hut 
or a trapper’s camp—he passed his boyhood days and slept at night among the 
solemn silence of nature’s primeval grandeur. All the delicate arts of the forest, 
the craft of the woodsman, the trick of the trapper, the stratagem of the Indian 
fighter, the wiley shrewdness of the tawny savage, the hardships and dangers of 
pfoneer life were as familiar to Cooper as were the legends of North Britain and the 
stirring ballads of the highlands and the lowlands to Walter Scott, But for this 
experience we should never have had tl famous Leather Stocking lales. 

From this wilderness the boy was sent at the age of thirteen to Yale College^ 
where he remained three years, but was too restless and adventurous to de\ ote himself 

165 




























166 


JAMES FENIMORE, COOPER. 


diligently to study and was dismissed in disgrace at sixteen. For one year lie 
shipped before the mast as a common sailor and for the next five years served as a 
midshipman in the United States Navy, making himself master of that knowledge 
and detail of nautical life which he afterwards employed to so much advantage in 
his romances of the sea. 

In 1811 Cooper resigned his post as midshipman, and married Miss Delancey, 
with whom he lived happily for forty years. The first few years of his married 
life were spent in quiet retirement. For some months he resided in Westchester 
'County, the scene of his book “ The Spy.” Then he removed to his old home at 
Cooperstown and took possession of the family mansion, to which he had fallen heir 
through the death of his father. Here he prepared to spend his life as a quiet 
country gentleman, and did so until a mere accident called him into authorship. 
Up to that date he seems never to have touched a pen or even thought of one except 
to write an ordinary letter. He was, however, fond of reading, and often read aloud 
to his wife. One day wdiile reading a British novel he looked up and playfully 
said : “ I could write a better book than that myself.” “ Suppose you try,” replied 

his wife, and retiring to his library he wrote a chapter which he read to Mrs. 
'Cooper. She was pleased with it and suggested that he continue, which he did, and 
published the book, under the title of “ Precaution,” in 1820. 

No one at that time had thought of writing a novel with the scene laid in 
America, and “ Precaution,” which had an English setting, was so thoroughly Eng¬ 
lish that it was reviewed in London with no suspicion of its American authorship. 
The success which it met, while not great, impressed Cooper that as he had not failed 
with a novel describing British life, of which he knew little, he might succeed Avith 
one on American life, of which he knew much. It Avas a happy thought. Scott’s 
“Ivanhoe” had just been read by him and it suggested an American historical 
theme, and he wrote the story of “ The Spy,” which he published in 1821. It Avas 
a tale of the Revolution, in which the central figure, Harvey Birch, the spy, is one 
of the most interesting and effectAe characters in the realm of romantic literature. 
It quickly followed Scott’s “ Ivanhoe ” into many languages. 

Encouraged by the plaudits from both sides of the Atlantic Cooper Avrote another 
story, “The Pioneers” (1823), which Avas the first attempt to put into fiction the 
life of the frontier and the character of the backwoodsman. Here Cooper Avas in 
his element, on firm ground, familiar to him from his infancy, but the book Avas a 
revelation to the outside world. It is in this work that one of the greatest charac¬ 
ters in fiction, the old backwoodsman Natty Bumpo—the famous Leather-Stock¬ 
ing—appeared and gave his name to a series of tales, comprised, in five volumes, 
which was not finally completed for tAventy years. Strange to say, this famous 
series of books Avas not written in regular order. To follow the story logically the 
reader is recommended to read first the “ Deerslayer,” next the “ Last of the Mohi¬ 
cans,” followed by “The Pathfinder,” then “The Pioneers,” and last “The 
Prairie,” Avhich ends with the death of Leather-Stocking. 

The sea tales of Cooper Avere also suggested by Walter Scott, avIio published the 
“ Pirate” in 1821. This book Avas being discussed by Cooper and some friends. 
The latter took the position that Scott could not have been its author since he was a 
laAvyer and therefore could not have the knowledge of sea life which the book dis- 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 


167 


played. Cooper, being himself a mariner, declared that it could not have been 
written by a man familiar with the sea. He argued that, it lacked that detail of 
information which no mariner would have failed to exhibit. To prove this point he 
determined to write a sea tale, and in 1823 his book “ The Pilot’’ appeared, which 
was the first genuine salt-water novel ever written and to this day is one of the best. 
Tom Coffin, the hero of this novel, is the only one of all Cooper’s characters worthy 
to take a place beside Leather-Stocking, and the two books were published within 
two years of each other. In 1829 appeared “ The Red Rover,” which is wholly a 
tale of the ocean, as “ The Last of the Mohicans ” is wholly a tale of the forest. In 
all, Cooper wrote ten sea tales, which with his land stories established the fact that 
he was equally at home whether on the green billows or under the green trees. 

In 1839 Cooper published his “ History of the United States Navy,” which is to 
this day the only authority on the subject for the period of which it treats. He 
also wrote many other novels on American subjects and some eight or ten like 
“ Bravo,” “ The Headsman ” and others on European themes ; but it is by “ The 
Spy,” the five Leather-Stocking tales, and four or five of his sea tales that his 
fame has been secured and will be maintained. 

In 1822, after “The Spy” had made Cooper famous, he removed to New York, 
where he lived for a period of four years, one of the most popular men in the 
metropolis. His force of character, big-heartedness, and genial, companionable 
nature—notwithstanding the fact that he was contentious and frequently got into 
the most heated discussions—made him unusually popular with those who knew 
him. He had many friends, and his friends were the best citizens of New York. 
He founded the “ Bread and Cheese Lunch,” to which belonged Chancellor Kent, 
the poets Fitzgreen Halleck and Win. Cullen Bryant, Samuel Morse, the inventor 
of the telegraph, and many other representatives of science, literature, and the 
learned professions. In 1826 he sailed for Europe, in various parts of which he 
resided for a period of six years. Before his departure he was tendered a dinner in 
New York, which was attended by many of the.,most prominent men of the nation. 
Washington Irving had gone to the Old World eleven years before and traveled 
throughout Great Britain and over the Continent, but Cooper’s works, though it was 
but six years since his first volume was published, were at this time more widely 
known than those of Irving; and with the author of the “Sketchbook ” he divided 
the honors which the Old World so generously showered upon those two brilliant 
representatives of the New. 

Many pleasant pages might be filled with the records of Cooper’s six years in 
Europe, during which time he enjoyed the association and respect of the greatest 
literary personages of the Old World. It would be interesting to tell how Sir Walter 
Scott sought him out in Paris and renewed the acquaintance again in London ; how 
he lived in friendship and intimacy with General Lafayette at the French capital ; 
to tell of his associations with Wordsworth and Rogers in London ; his intimate 
friendship with the great Italian Greenough, and his fondness for Italy, which 
country he preferred above all others outside of America; of the delightful little 
villa where he lived in Florence, where he said he could look out upon green leaves 
and write to the music of the birds ; to picture him settled for a summer in Naples ; 
living in Tasso’s villa at Sarento, writing his stories in the same house in which the 


168 


JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 


• * ► 

great Latin author had lived, with the same glorious view of the sea and the bay, and 
the surf dashing almost against its walls. But space forbids that we should indulge 
in recounting these pleasant reminiscences. Let it be said that wherever he was 
he was thoroughly and pronouncedly an American. He was much annoyed by the 
ignorance and prejudice of the English in all that related to his country. In 
France he vigorously defended the system of American government in a public 
pamphlet which he issued in favor of General Lafayette, upon whom the public 
press was making an attack. He was equally in earnest in bringing forward the 
claims of our poets, and was accustomed at literary meetings and dinner parties to 
carry volumes of Bryant, Halleck, Drake and others, from which he read quotations 
to prove his assertions of their merits. Almost every prominent American who 
visited Europe during his seven years’ sojourn abroad brought back pleasant recol¬ 
lections of his intercourse with the great and patriotic novelist. 

Cooper returned to America in 1833, the same year that Washington Irving came 
back to his native land. He retired to his home at Cooperstown, where he spent 
the remaining nineteen years of his life, dying on the 14th day of September, 1852, 
one day before the sixty-second anniversary of his birth. His palatial home at 
Cooperstown, as were also his various places of residence in New York and foreign 
lands, were always open to his deserving countrymen, and many are the ambitious 
young aspirants in art, literature and politics who have left his hospitable roof with 
higher ideals, loftier ambitions and also with a more exalted patriotism. 

A few days after his death a meeting of prominent men was held in New York 
in honor of their distinguished countryman. Washingion Irving presided and 
William Cullen Bryant delivered an oration paving fitting tribute to the genius of 
the first great American novelist, who was first to show how fit for fiction were the 
scenes, the characters, and the history of his native land. Nearly fifty years have 
passed since that day, but Cooper’s men of the sea and his men of the forest and the 
plain still survive, because they deserve to live, because they were true when they 
were written, and remain to-dav the best of their kind. Though other fashions in 
fiction have come and gone and other novelists have a more finished art nowadays, 
no one of them all has succeeded more completely in doing what he tried to do than 
did James Fenimore Cooper. 

If we should visit Cooperstown, New York, the most interesting spot we should 
see would be the grave of America’s first great novelist; and the one striking feature 
about it would be the marble statue of Leather Stocking, with dog and gun, over¬ 
looking the last resting-place of his great creator. Then we should visit the house 
and go into the library and sit in the chair and lean over the table where he was 
created. Then down to the beautiful Otsego Lake, and as the little pleasure steamer 
comes into view we peer to catch the gilded name painted on its side. Nearer it 
comes, and we read with delight “Natty Bumpo,” the real name of Leather 
Stocking. Otsego Hall, the cemetery and the lake alike, are a shrine to the memory 
of Cooper and this greatest hero of American fiction. And we turn away deter¬ 
mined to read again the whole of the Leather Stocking Tales . 


JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 


169 


ENCOUNTER WITH A PANTHER. 


(FROM “ THE PIONEERS.”) 


Y this time they had gained the summit of 
the mountain, where they left the highway, 
and pursued their course under the shade 
of the stately trees that crowned the eminence. 
The day was becoming warm, and the girls 
plunged more deeply into the forest, as they found 
its invigorating coolness agreeably contrasted to the 
excessive heat they had experienced in the ascent. 
The conversation, as if by mutual consent, was en¬ 
tirely changed to the little incidents and scenes of 
their walk, and every tall pine, and every shrub or 
flower called forth some simple expression of ad¬ 
miration. In this manner they proceeded along the 
margin of the precipice, catching occasional glimpses 
of the placid Otsego, or pausing to listen to the 
rattling of wheels and the sounds of hammers that 
rose from the valley, to mingle the signs of men with 
the scenes of nature, when Elizabeth suddenly 
started and exclaimed : 

“ Listen ! There are the cries of a child on this 
mountain ! Is there a clearing near us, or can some 
little one have strayed from its parents ? ” 

“ Such things frequently happen,” returned Louisa. 
“ Let us follow the sounds ; it may be a wanderer 
starving on the hill.” 

Urged by this consideration, the females pursued 
the low, mournful sounds, that proceeded from the 
forest, with quick impatient steps. More than once 
the ardent Elizabeth was on the point of announcing 
that she saw the sufferer, when Louisa caught her by 
the arm, and pointing behind them, cried, “ Look at 
the dog ! 

Brave had been their companion from the time the 
voice of his young mistress lured him from his kennel, 
to the present moment. His advanced age had long 
before deprived him of his activity ; and when his 
companions stopped to view the scenery, or to add to 
their bouquets, the mastiff would lay his huge frame 
on the "-round and await their movements, with his 
eyes closed, and a listlessness in his air that ill ac¬ 
corded with the character of a protector. But when, 
aroused by this cry from Louisa, Miss Temple turned, 
she saw the dog with his eyes keenly set on some 
distant object, his head bent near the ground, and his 



hair actually rising on his body, through fright or 
anger. It was most probably the latter, for he was 
growling in a low key, and occasionally showing his 
teeth in a manner that would have terrified his mis¬ 
tress, had she not so well known his good qualities. 

“ Brave! ” she said, “ be quiet, Brave ! what do 
you see, fellow ? ” 

At the sound of her voice, the rage of the mastiff, 
instead of being at all diminished, was very sensibly 
increased. He stalked in front of the ladies, and 
seated himself at the feet of his mistress, growling 
louder than before, and occasionally giving vent to his 
ire by a short, surly barking. 

“What does he see?” said Elizabeth; “there 
must be some animal in sight.” 

Hearing no answer from her companion, Miss 
Temple turned her head, and beheld Louisa, stand¬ 
ing with her face whitened to the color of death, and 
her finger pointing upward, with a sort of flickering, 
convulsed motion. The quick eye of Elizabeth 
glanced in the direction indicated by her friend, 
where she saw the fierce front and glaring eyes of a 
female panther, fixed on them in horrid malignity, 
and threatening to leap. 

“ Let us fly,” exclaimed Elizabeth, grasping the 
arm of Louisa, whose form yielded like melting snow. 

There was not a single feeling in the temperament 
of Elizabeth Temple that could prompt her to desert 
a companion in such an extremity. She fell on her 
knees, by the side of the inanimate Louisa, tearing 
from the person of her friend, with instinctive readi¬ 
ness, such parts of her dress as might obstruct her 
respiration, and encouraging their only safeguard, the 
dog, at the same time, by the sounds of her voice. 

“ Courage, Brave! ” she cried, her own tones be¬ 
ginning to tremble, “ courage, courage, good Brave ! ” 

A quarter-grown cub, that had hitherto been un¬ 
seen, now appeared, dropping from the branches of a 
sapling that grew under the shade of the beech which 
held its dam. This ignorant, but vicious creature, 
approached the dog, imitating the actions and sounds 
of its parent, but exhibiting a strange mixture of the 
playfulness of a kitten with the ferocity of its race. 
Standing on its hind-legs, it would rend the bark of a 










170 


JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 


tree with its forepaws, and play the antics of a cat; 
and then, by lashing itself with its tail, growling and 
scratching the earth, it would attempt the manifesta¬ 
tions of anger that rendered its parent so terrific. 
All this time Brave stood firm and undaunted, his 
short tail erect, his body drawn backward on its 
haunches, and his eyes following the movements of 
both dam and cub. At every gambol played by the 
latter, it approached nigher to the dog, the growling 
of the three becoming more horrid at each moment, 
until the younger beast, overleaping its intended 
bound, fell directly before the mastiff. There w r as a 
moment of fearful cries and struggles, but they ended 
almost as soon as commenced, by the cub appearing 
in the air, hurled from the jaws of Brave, with a 
violence that sent it against a tree so forcibly as to 
render it completely senseless. 

Elizabeth witnessed the short struggle, and her 
blood was warming with the triumph of the dog 
when she saw the form of the old panther in the air, 
springing twenty feet from the branch of the beech 
to the back of the mastiff. No words of ours can 
describe the fury of the conflict that followed. It 
was a confused struggle on the dry leaves, accom¬ 
panied by loud and terrific cries. Miss Temple con¬ 
tinued on her knees, bending over the form of Louisa, 
her eyes fixed on the animals, with an interest so 
horrid, and yet so intense, that she almost forgot her 
own stake in the result. So rapid and vigorous w r ere 
the bounds of the inhabitant of the forest, that its 
active frame seemed constantly in the air, while the 
dog nobly faced his foe at each successive leap. 
When the panther lighted on the shoulders of the 
mastiff, which w r as its constant aim, old Brave, 
though torn with her talons, and stained with his 
own blood, that already flowed from a dozen wounds, 
would shake off his furious foe like a feather, and 
rearing on his hind-legs, rush to the fray again, with 
jaws distended and a dauntless eye. But age, and 
his pampered life, greatly disqualified the noble mas¬ 
tiff for such a struggle. In everything but courage 
he was only the vestige of what he had once been. 
A higher bound than ever raised the wary and 
furious beast far beyond the reach of the dog, who 
was making a desperate but fruitless dash at her, 
from which she alighted in a favorable position, on 
the back of her aged foe. For a single moment only 


could the panther remain there, the great strength of 
the dog returning with a convulsive effort. But 
Elizabeth saw, as Brave fastened his teeth in the side 
of his enemy, that the collar of brass around his 
neck, which had been glittering throughout the fray, 
was of the color of blood, and directly, that his frame 
was sinking to the earth, where it soon lay prostrate 
and helpless. Several mighty efforts of the wild-cat 
to extricate herself from the jaws of the dog fol¬ 
lowed, but they were fruitless, until the mastiff turned 
on his back, his lips collapsed, and his teeth loosened, 
when the short convulsions and stillness that suc¬ 
ceeded announced the death of poor Brave. 

Elizabeth now lay wholly at the mercy of the 
beast. There is said to be something in the front of 
the image of the Maker that daunts the hearts of 
the inferior beings of his creation ; and it would seem 
that some such power in the present instance sus¬ 
pended the threatened blow. The eyes of the mon¬ 
ster and the kneeling maiden met for an instant, 
when the former stooped to examine her fallen foe ; 
next to scent her luckless cub. From the latter ex¬ 
amination it turned, however, with its eyes appar¬ 
ently emitting flashes of fire, its tail lashing its sides 
furiously, and its claws projecting inches from her 
broad feet. 

Miss Temple did not or could not move. Her 
hands were clasped in the attitude of prayer, but her 
eyes were still drawn to her terrible enemy—her 
cheeks were blanched to the whiteness of marble, 
and her lips were slightly separated with horror. 
The moment seemed now to have arrived for the 
fatal termination, and the beautiful figure of Eliza¬ 
beth was bowing meekly to the stroke, when a rust¬ 
ling of leaves behind seemed rather to mock the 
organs than to meet her ears. 

“ Hist! hist!” said a low voice, “ stoop lower, gal! 
your bonnet hides the creature’s head.” 

It was rather the yielding of nature than a com¬ 
pliance with this unexpected order, that caused the 
head of our heroine to sink on her bosom; when 
she heard the report of the rifle, the whiz of the 
bullet, and the enraged cries of the beast, who 
was rolling over on the earth, biting its own flesh, 
and tearing the twigs and branches within its reach. 
At the next instant the form of Leather-Stocking 
rushed by her, and he called aloud: 







JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 


171 


“ Come in, Hector, come in old fool; ’tis a bard- 
lived animal, and may jump agin.” 

Natty fearlessly maintained his position in front of 
the females, notwithstanding the violent bounds and 
threatening aspect of the wounded panther, which 


gave several indications of returning strength and 
ferocity until his rifle was again loaded, when he 
stepped up to the enraged animal, and, placing the 
muzzle close to its head, every spark of life was ex¬ 
tinguished by the discharge. 


“•O®- 


THE CAPTURE 

OM,” cried Barnstable, starting, “ there is 
the blow of a wdiale.” 

“Ay, ay, sir,” returned the cockswain, 
with undisturbed composure ; “ here is his spout, not 
half a mile to seaward ; the easterly gale has driven 
the creater to leeward, and he begins to find himself 
in shoal water. He’s been sleeping, while he should 
have been working to windward !” 

“ The fellow takes it coolly, too ! he’s in no hurry 
to get an offing.” 

“ I rather conclude, sir,” said the cockswain, roll¬ 
ing over his tobacco in his mouth very composedly, 
while his little sunken eyes began to twinkle with 
pleasure at the sight, “ the gentleman has lost his 
reckoning, and don’t know which way to head, to 
take himself back into blue water.” 

“ ’Tis a fin back !” exclaimed the lieutenant; “ he 
will soon make headway, and be off.” 

“ No, sir; ’tis a right whale,” answered Tom ; “ I 
saw his spout; he threw up a pair of as pretty 
rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He’s 
a raal oil-butt, that fellow !” 

Barnstable laughed, and exclaimed, in joyous 
tones— 

“ Give strong way, my hearties ! There seems 
nothing better to be done; let us have a stroke of a 
harpoon at that impudent rascal.” 

The men shouted spontaneously, and the old cock¬ 
swain suffered his solemn visage to relax into a small 
laugh, while the whaleboat sprang forward like a 
courser for the goal. During the few minutes they 
w r ere pulling towards their game, long Tom arose 
from his crouching attitude in the stern sheets, and 
transferred his huge frame to the bows of the boat, 
where he made such preparation to strike the whale 
as the occasion required. 

The tub, containing about half of a whale line, was 
placed at the feet of Barnstable, who had been pre- 


OF A WHALE. 

paring an oar to steer with, in place of the rudder, 
which was unshipped in order that, if necessary, the 
boat might be whirled around when not advancing. 

Their approach w 7 as utterly unnoticed by the 
monster of the deep, who continued to amuse himself 
with throwing the water in two circular spouts high 
into the air, occasionally flourishing the broad flukes of 
his tail with graceful but terrific force, until the 
hardy seamen were within a few hundred feet of 
him, when he suddenly cast his head downwards, 
and, without apparent effort, reared his immense body 
for many feet above the water, waving his tail violently, 
and producing a whizzing noise, that sounded like the 
rushing of winds. The cockswain stood erect, poising 
his harpoon, ready for the blow; but, when he beheld 
the creature assuming his formidable attitude, he 
waved his hand to his commander, who instantly 
signed to his men to cease rowing. In this situation 
the sportsmen rested a few moments, while the whale 
struck several blows on the water in rapid succession, 
the noise of which re-echoed along the cliffs like the 
hollow reports of so many cannon. After the wanton 
exhibition of his terrible strength, the monster sunk 
again into his native element, and slowly disappeared 
from the eyes of his pursuers. 

“Which way did he head, Tom?” cried Barn¬ 
stable, the moment the whale was out of sight.. 

“Pretty much up and down, sir,” returned the 
Cockswain, whose eye was gradually brightening with 
the excitement of the sport; “ he’ll soon run his nose 
against the bottom, if he stands long on that course, 
and will be glad enough to get another snuff of pure 
air; send her a few fathoms to starboard, sir, and I 
promise we shall not be out of his track.” 

The conjecture of the experienced old seaman 
proved true, for in a few minutes the water broke 
near them, and another spout was cast into the air, 
when the huge animal rushed for half his length in 











172 


JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 


the same direction, and fell on the sea with a turbu¬ 
lence and foam equal to that which is produced by 
the launching of a vessel, for the first time, into its 
proper element. After the evolution, the whale 
rolled heavily, and seemed to rest from further efforts. 

His slightest movements were closely watched by 
Barnstable and his cockswain, and, when he was in a 
state of comparative rest, the former gave a signal 
to his crew to ply their oars once more. A few long 
and vigorous strokes sent the boat directly up to the 
broadside of the whale, with its bows pointing toward one 
of the fins, which was, at times, as the animal yielded 
sluggishly to the action of the waves, exposed to view. 

The cockswain poised his harpoon with much pre¬ 
cision and then darted it from him with a violence 
that buried the iron in the body of their foe. The 
instant the blow was made, long Tom shouted, with 
singular earnestness,— 

“ Starn all!” 

“ Stern all!” echoed Barnstable; when the obe¬ 
dient seamen, by united efforts, forced the boat in a 
backward direction, beyond the reach of any blow 
from their formidable antagonist. The alarmed 
animal, however, meditated no such resistance ; ignor¬ 
ant of his own power, and of the insignificance of 
his enemies, he sought refuge in flight. One moment 
of stupid surprise succeeded the entrance of the 
iron, when he cast his huge tail into the air with a 
violence that threw the sea around him into in¬ 
creased commotion, and then disappeared, with the 
quickness of lightning, amid a cloud of foam. 

“ Snub him !” shouted Barnstable ; “ hold on, Tom ; 
he rises already.” 

“ Ay, ay, sir,” replied the composed cockswain, 
seizing the line, which was running out of the boat 
with a velocity that rendered such a manoeuvre 
rather hazardous. 

The boat was dragged violently in his wake, and 
cut through the billows with a terrific rapidity, that 
at moments appeared to bury the slight fabric in the 
ocean. When long Tom beheld his victim throwing 
his spouts on high again, he pointed with exultation 
to the jetting fluid, which was streaked with the 
deep red of blood, and cried,— 

“ Ay, I’ve touched the fellow’s life ! It must be 
more than two foot of blubber that stops my iron 
from reaching the life of any whale that ever sculled 

t 1 • ^ / vp r >n.” 


14 I believe you have saved yourself the trouble of 
using the bayonet you have rigged for a lance,” said 
his commander, who entered into the sport with all 
the ardor of one whose youth had been chiefly passed 
in such pursuits ; “ feel your line, Master Coffin ; can 
we haul alongside of our enemy ? I like not the 
course he is steering, as he tows us from the 
schooner.” 

“ ’Tis the creater’s way, sir,” said the cockswain ; 
“ you know they need the air in their nostrils when 
they run, the same as a man ; but lay hold, boys, and 
let us haul up to him.” 

The seaman now seized their whale-line, and slowly 
drew their boat to within a few feet of the tail of 
the fish, whose progress became sensibly less rapid as 
he grew weak with the loss of blood. In a few 
minutes he stopped running, and appeared to roll 
uneasily on the water, as if suffering the agony of 
death. 

“Shall we pull in and finish him, Tom?” cried 
Barnstable; “ a few sets from your bayonet would 
do it.” 

The cockswain stood examining his game with cool 
discretion, and replied to this interrogatory,— 

“ No, sir, no ; he’s going into his flurry; there’s 
no occasion for disgracing ourselves by using a soldier’s 
weapon in taking a whale. Starn off, sir, starn off! 
the creater’s in his flurry.” 

The warning of the prudent cockswain was promptly 
obeyed, and the boat cautiously drew off to a dis- 
tance, leaving to the animal a clear space while under 
its dying agonies. From a state of perfect rest, the 
terrible monster threw its tail on high as when in 
sport, but its blows were trebled in rapidity and vio¬ 
lence, till all was hid from view by a pyramid of 
foam, that was deeply dyed with blood. The roar¬ 
ings of the fish were like the bellowings of a herd of 
bulls, and, to one who was ignorant of the fact, it 
would have appeared as if a thousand monsters were 
engaged in deadly combat behind the bloody mist 
that obstructed the view. Gradually these efforts 
subsided, and, w r hen the discolored water again settled 
down to the long and regular swell of the ocean, the 
fish was seen exhausted, and yielding passively to its 
fate. As life departed, the enormous black mass 
rolled to one side; and when the white and glisten¬ 
ing skin of the belly became apparent, the seamen 
well knew that their victory was achieved. 


















































■ V 


































' 

■, 


















































































































NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


a THE GREATEST OF AMERICAN ROMANCERS.’’ 

O black knight in Sir Walter Scott’s novels, nor the red Indians of 
Cooper, nor his famous pioneer, Leather Stocking of the forest, nor 
his long Tom of the ocean, ever seemed more truly romantic than 
do Hawthorne’s stern and gloomy Calvinists of “The Scarlet Let¬ 
ter,” and “The House of Seven Gables,” or his Italian hero of “The 
Marble Faun.” 

We have characterized Hawthorne as the greatest of American romancers. We 
might have omitted the word American , for he has no equal in romance perhaps in 
the world of letters. An eminent critic declares: “His genius was greater than 
that of the idealist, Emerson. In all his mysticism his style was always clear and 
exceedingly graceful, while in those delicate, varied and permanent effects which 
are gained by a happy arrangement of words in their sentences, together with that 
unerring directness and unswerving force which characterize his writings, no author 
in modern times has equalled him. To the rhetorician, his style is a study; to the 
lay reader, a delight that eludes analysis. He is the most eminent representative of 
the American spirit in literature.” 

It was in the old town of Salem, Massachusetts—where his Puritan ancestors had 
lived for nearly two hundred years—with its haunted memories of witches and 
strange sea tales; its stories of Endicott and the Indians, and the sombre traditions 
of witchcraft and Puritan persecution that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born July 4, 
1804. And it was in this grim, ancient city by the sea that the life of the renowned 
romancer was greatly bound up. In his childhood the town was already falling to 
decay, and his lonely surroundings filled his young imagination with a wierdness 
that found expression in the books of his later life, and impressed upon his character 
a seriousness that clung to him ever after. His father was a sea-captain,—but a 
most melancholy and silent man,—who died when Nathaniel was four years old. 
His mother lived a sad and secluded life, and the boy thus early learned to exist in 
a strange and imaginative world of his own creation. So fond of seclusion did he 
become that even "after his graduation from college in 1825, he returned to his old 
haunt at Salem and resumed "his solitary, dreamy existence. For twelve years, from 
1825 to 1837, he went nowhere, he saw no one; he worked in his room by day, 
reading and writing; at twilight he wandered out along the shore, or through the 
darkened streets of the town. Certainly this was no attractive life to most young 
men; but for Hawthorne it had its fascination and during this time he was storing 

173 









































174 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


his mind, forming his style, training his imagination and preparing for the splendid 
literary fame of his later years. 

Hawthorne received his early education in Salem, partly at the school of' Joseph 
E. Worcester, the author of “Worcester’s Dictionary.” He entered Bowdoin Col¬ 
lege in 1821. The poet, Longfellow, and John S. C. Abbott were his classmates; 
and Fianklin 1 leice one class in advance of him—was his close friend. He 
graduated in 1825 without any special distinction. His first book, “Fanshawe,” 
a novel, was issued in 1826, but so poor was its success that he suppressed its fur- 



THE OLD MANSE 


CONCORD, MASS 




>***• _ ' 


I 11 tips liynse Ralph Waldo Emerson dwelt for ten years, and, here, in 
ote Nature and other philosophic essays, Hawthorne prepared his 


Built for Emerson’s grandfather. 

the same loom wheie Emerson wrote iuumc u,nu umer oiiiiosomnc occov« Hawthm>no a 

“Twice Told Tales,” and “Mosses from an Old Manse.” He declares the four’vears n849 d 

this house were the happiest of his life. ueciaies the tour years (1842-1846) spent m 


ther publication. _ Subsequently he placed the manuscript of a collection of stories 
m the hands of his publisher, but timidly withdrew and destroyed them His first 
practical encouragement was received from Samuel G. Goodrich, who published four 
stories in the “Token,” one of the annuals of that time, in 1831. Mr. Goodrich 
also engaged Hawthorne as editor of the “American Magazine of Useful and Enter¬ 
taining Knowledge,” which position he occupied from 1836 to 1838 About this 
time he also contributed some of his best stories to the “New England Magazine ” 
. 10 Knickerbocker, and the “ Democratic Review.” It was a part of these maga- 
zine stones which lie collected and published in 1837 in the volume entitled, “Twice 
ioid iales, embodying the fruits of his twelve years’ labor. 
















NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


175 


This book stamped the author as a man of stronger imagination and deeper 
insight into human nature than Washington Irving evinced in his famous sketches 
of the Hudson or Cooper in his frontier stories, for delightful as was Irving’s writ¬ 
ings and vivid as were Cooper’s pictures, it was plain to be seen that Hawthorne 
had a richer style and a firmer grasp of the art of fiction than either of them. 
Longfellow, the poet, reviewed the book with hearty commendation, and Poe pre¬ 
dicted a brilliant future for the writer if he would abandon allegory. Thus 
encouraged, Hawthorne came out from his seclusion into the world again, and mixed 
once more with his fellow-men. His friend, the historian, Bancroft, secured him 
position in the Custom House at Salem, in 1839, which he held for two years. This 
position he lost through political jobbery on a trumped-up charge. For a few 
months he then joined in the Brook Farm settlement, though he w&s never in 
sympathy with the movement; nor was he a believer in the transcendental notions 
of Emerson and his school. He remained a staunch Democrat in the midst of the 
Abolitionists. His note-books were full of his discontent with the life at the Brook 
Farm. His observations of this enterprise took shape in the“Blythedale Romance” 
which is the only literary memorial of the association. The heroine of this novel 
was Margaret Fuller, under the name of “ Zenobia,” and the description of the 
drowning of Zenobia—a fate which Margaret Fuller had met—is the most tragic 
passage in all the writings of the author. 

In 1842 Hawthorne married Miss Sophia Peabody—a most fortunate and happy 


marnasre- 


-and 


1 the young couple moved to Concord wh^re they lived in the house 
known as the “ Old Manse,” which had been built for Emerson’s grandfather, and 
in which Emerson himself dwelt ten years. He chose for his study the same room 
in which the philosopher had written his famous book “ Nature.” . Hawthorne 
declares that the happiest period of his life were the four years spent in the “Old 
Manse.” While living there he collected another lot of miscellaneous stories and 
published them in 1845 as a second volume of “ Twice-Told Tales,” and the next 
year came his “ Mosses from an Old Manse,” being also a collection from his pub¬ 
lished writings. In 1846 a depleted income and larger demands of a glowing 
family made it necessary for him to seek a business engagement. Ihrough a friend 
he received an appointment as Surveyor of Customs at Salem, and again removed 
to the old town where he was born forty-two years before. It was during his 
engagement here, from 1846 to 1849, that he planned and wrote his famous book 

“The Scarlet Letter,” which was published in 1850. 

A broader experience is needed to compose a full-grown novel than to sketch a 
short tale. Scott was more than fifty when he published “Waverly.”. Cooper 
wrote the “ Spv ” when thirty-three. Thackeray, the author of “Vanity Fair, 
was almost forty when he finished that work. “Adam Bede appeared when 
Georo-e Elliot was in her fortieth year; and the “ Scarlet Letter,” greater than them 
all, did not appear until 1850, when its author was in his forty-seventh year All 
critics readilv asrree that this romance is the masterpiece in American fiction. 


land— 1 “ The Scarlet .Letter" is super.- . 

a century has passed since “The Scarlet Letter’ was written ; but it stands to-day 

more popular than ever before. 






176 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


Enumerated briefly, tlie books written by Hawthorne in the order of their publi¬ 
cation are as follows: “ Fanshawe,” a novel (1826), suppressed by the author; 
“Twice-Told Tales” (1837), a collection of magazine stories ; “Twice-Told Tales” 
(second volume, 1845) Mosses from an Old Manse” (1846), written while he 
lived at the “ Old Manse ” ; “ The Scarlet Letter ” (1850), his greatest book ; “ The 
House of Seven Gables” (1851), written while he lived at Lenox, Massachusetts; 
“The Wonder Book ” (1851), a volume of classic stories for children ; “ The Bly- 
thedale Romance ” (1852); “ Life of Franklin Pierce ” (1852), which was written to 
assist his friend Pierce, who was running for President of the United States ; “Tangle- 
Wood Tales” (1853), another work for children, continuing the classic legends of 
bis '< Wonder Book,” reciting the adventures of those who went forth to seek the 
“ Golden Fleece,” to explore the labyrinth of the “Minotaur” and sow the “Dragon’s 
Teeth.” Pierce was elected President in 1853 and rewarded Hawthorne by 
appointing nm\ Consul to Liverpool. This position he filled for four years and 
afterwards spent three years in traveling on the Continent, during which time he 
gathered material for the greatest of his books—next to “ The Scarlet Letter ”— 
entitled “TheMarble Faun,” which was brought out in England in 1860, and the 
same year Mr. Hawthorne returned to America and spent the remainder of his life 
at “The Wayside” in Concord. During his residence here he wrote for the 
“ Atlantic Monthly ” the papers which were collected and published in 1863 under 
the title of “ Our Old Home.” After Mr. Hawthorne’s death, his unpublished 
manuscripts, “ The Dolliver Romance,” “ Septimius Felton ” and “ Dr. Grimshawe’s 
Secret,” were published. Mrs. Hawthorne, also, edited and published her husband’s 
“ American and English Note-Books ” and his “ French and Italian Note-Books ” 
in 1869. The best life of the author is perhaps that written by his son, Julian 
Hawthorne, which appeared in 1885, entitled “ Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife ; 
a Biography.” 

A new and complete edition of Hawthorne’s works has been lately issued in 
twenty volumes; also a compact and illustrated library edition in seven volumes. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne died M*y 18, 1864, while traveling with his friend and 
college-mate, Ex-President Pierce, in the White Mountains, and was buried near 
where Emerson and Thoreau were later placed in Concord Cemetery. Emerson, 
Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier were at the funeral. His publisher, Mr. Field, 
was also there and wrote: “ We carried him through the blossoming orchards of 
Concord and laid him down in a group of pines on the hillside, the unfinished 
romance which had cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin.” Mr. Longfellow, 
in an exquisite poem describes the sce-ne, and referring to the uncompleted romance 
in the closing lines says : 

“ Ah, who shall lift, that wand of magic power, 

And the lost clue* regain ? 

The unfinished window in Alladin’s tower 
Unfinished must remain.” 

The noble wife, who had been the inspiration and practical stimulus of the great 
romancer, survived her distinguished husband nearly seven years. She died in 

Loudon, aged sixty, February 26, 1871, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery 
near the grave of Leigh Hunt. J 9 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


177 


EMERSON AND THE EMERSONITES. 

(FROM “ MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE.”) 


HERE were circumstances around me which 
made it difficult to view the world pre¬ 
cisely as it exists; for severe and sober 
as was the Old Manse, it was necessary to go but a 
little way beyond its threshold before meeting with 
stranger moral shapes of men than might have been 
encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand 
miles. These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were 
attracted thither by the wide spreading influence of 
a great original thinker who had his earthly abode at 
the opposite extremity of our village. His mind 
acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with 
wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long 
pilgrimages to speak with him face to face. 

Young visionaries, to whom just so much of in¬ 
sight had been imparted as to make life all a laby¬ 
rinth around them, came to seek the clew which 
should guide them out of their self-involved bewilder¬ 
ment. Gray-headed theorists, whose systems—at first 
air—had finally imprisoned them in a fiery framework, 
traveled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, 
but to invite the free spirit into their own thralldom. 
People that had lighted upon a new thought—or 
thought they had fancied new—came to Emerson as 
a finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to 
ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, troubled, 
earnest wanderers through the midnight of the moral 
world beheld his intellectual fire as a beacon burning 
upon a hill-top, and climbing the difficult ascent, 
looked forth into the surrounding obscurity more 
hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed objects 
unseen before :—mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses 
of creation among the chaos: but also, as was un¬ 
avoidable, it attracted bats and owls and the whole 
host of night-birds, which flapped their dusty wings 
against the gazer’s eyes, and sometimes were mistaken 
for fowls of angelic feather. Such delusions al¬ 


ways hover nigh whenever a beacon-fire of truth is 
kindled. 

For myself there had been epochs of my life when 
I too might have asked of this prophet the master- 
word that should solve me the riddle of the uni¬ 
verse ; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were 
no question to be put; and therefore admired Emer¬ 
son as a poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, 
but sought nothing from him as a philosopher. It 
was good, nevertheless, to meet him in the wood- 
paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure 
intellectual gleam diffused about his presence, like 
the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet, so 
simple, so without pretension, encountering each man 
alive as if expecting to receive more than he could 
impart. And in truth, the heart of many a man 
had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not read. 
But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without 
inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of his 
lofty thought, which in the brains of some people 
wrought a singular giddiness—new truth being as 
heady as new wine. 

Never was a poor country village infected with 
such a variety of queer, strangely-dressed, oddly- 
behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves 
to be important agents of this world’s destin}Y yet 
were simply bores of the first water. Such, I inragine, 
is the invariable character of persons who cvowd so 
closely about an original thinker as to dvaw in his 
unuttered breath, and thus become imbmed with a 
false originality. This triteness of novelt ry is enough 
to make any man of common sense blaspheme at all 
ideas of less than a century’s standing, and pray that 
the world may be petrified and rendered immovable 
in precisely the worst moral and phy sical state that it 
ever yet arrived at, rather than be benefitted by such 
schemes of such philosophers. 

-•O* - 



PEARL. 


(the scarlet letter, a romance. 1850 .) 


E have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; 
that little creature, whose innocent life 
had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of 
Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the 



rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it 
seemed to the sad woman, as Ae watched the growth, 
and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, 
and the intelligence that thi^w its quivering sunshine 


1 2 























178 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


over the tiny features of this child ! Her Pearl!— 
For so had Hester called her ; not as a name expres¬ 
sive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, 
white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated 
by the comparison. But she named the infant 
“ Pearl,” as being of great price,—purchased with 
all she had,—her mother’s only treasure! How 
strange, indeed! Men had marked this woman’s 
sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and 
disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could 
reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as 
a direct consequence of the sin which was thus 
punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place 
was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her 
parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, 
and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven ! Yet 
these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with 
hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed 
had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, 
that its result would be good. Hay after day, she 
looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature, 
ever dreading to detect some dark and wild pecu¬ 
liarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to 
which she owed her being. 

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its 
perfect shape, its vigor, and its natural dexterity in 
the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy 
Co have been brought forth in Eden ; worthy to have 
becrn left there, to be the plaything of the angels, 
after the world’s first parents w r ere driven out. The 
child hbad a native grace which does not invariably 
coexist wffth faultless beauty; its attire, however 
simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were 
the very g^rb that precisely became it best. But 
little Pearl wa>s not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, 
with a morbid purpose that may be better understood 
hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could 
be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its 
full play in the «‘irrangement and decoration of the 
dresses which the child wore, before the public eye. 
So magnificent was the small figure, when thus 
arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl’s own 
proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes 
which might have Extinguished a paler loveliness, 


that there was an absolute circle of radiance around 
her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a rus¬ 
set gown, torn and soiled with the child’s rude play, 
made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl’s as¬ 
pect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety ; in 
this one child there were many children, comprehend¬ 
ing the full scope between the w r ild-flower prettiness 
of a peasant-babv, and the pomp, in little, of an in¬ 
fant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a 
trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she 
never lost; and if, in any of her changes she had 
grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be 
herself,—it would have been no longer Pearl! 

One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains 
yet to be told. The very first thing which she had 
noticed, in her life, was—what ?—not the mother’s 
smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that 
faint embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered 
so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discus¬ 
sion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means ! 
But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become 
aware was—shall we say it ?—the scarlet letter on 
Hester’s bosom ! One day, as the mother stooped 
over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been caught by 
the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the 
letter ; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped 
at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided 
gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older 
child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Pnmne 
clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to 
tear it away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by 
the intelligent touch of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, 
as if her mother’s agonized gesture were meant only 
to make sport of her, did little Pearl look into her 
eyes, and smile ! From that epoch, except when the 
child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment’s 
safety; not a moment’s calm enjoyment of her. 
Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during 
which Pearl’s gaze might never once be fixed upon 
the scarlet letter ; but then, again, it would come at 
unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always 
with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the 
eyes. 







NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


179 


SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE. 


OW various are the situations of the people 
covered by the roofs beneath me, and how 
diversified are the events at this moment 
befalling them ! The new-born, the aged, the dying, 
the strong in life, and the recent dead, are in the cham¬ 
bers of these many mansions. The full of hope, the 
happy, the miserable, and the desperate, dwell 
together within the circle of my glance. In some of 
the houses over which my eyes roam so coldly, guilt 
is entering into hearts that are still tenanted by a 
debased and trodden virtue—guilt is on the very 
edge of commission, and the impending deed might 
be averted; guilt is done, and the criminal wonders 
if it be irrevocable. There are broad thoughts strug¬ 
gling in my mind, and, were I able to give them dis¬ 
tinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. 
Lo ! the rain-drops are descending. 

The clouds, within a little time, have gathered 
over all the sky, hanging heavily, as if about to drop 
in one unbroken mass upon the earth. At intervals 
the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts, 
quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, 
traveling slowly after its twin-born flame. A strong 
wind has sprung up, howls through the darkened 
streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies, to rebel 
against the approaching storm. All people hurry 
homeward—all that have a home; while a few 
lounge by the corners, or trudge on desperately, at 
their leisure. 

And now the storm lets loose its fury. In everv 



dwelling I perceive the faces of the chambermaids 
as they shut down the windows, excluding the im¬ 
petuous shower, and shrinking away from the quick, 
fiery glare. The large drops descend with force upon 
the slated roofs, and rise again in smoke. There is a 
rush and roar, as of a river through the air, and 
muddy streams bubble majestically along the pave¬ 
ment, whirl their dusky foam into the kennel, and 
disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa 
sink. I love not my station here aloft, in the midst 
of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell, 
with the blue lightning wrinkling on my brow, and 
the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my 
ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another glance 
to the sea, where the foam breaks in long white lines 
upon a broad expanse of blackness, or boils up in far- 
distant points, like snowy mountain-tops in the eddies 
of a flood; and let me look once more at the green 
plain, and little hills of the country, over which the 
giant of the storm is riding in robes of mist, and at 
the town, whose obscured and desolate streets might 
beseem a city of the dead; and turning a single 
moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author’s pros¬ 
pects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. 
But stay ! A little speck of azure has widened in 
the western heavens ; the sunbeams find a passage, 
and go rejoicing through the tempest; and on yonder 
darkest cloud, born, like hallowed hopes, of the glory 
of another world, and the trouble and tears of this, 
brightens forth the Rainbow ! 


A REMINISCENCE OF EARLY LIFE. 

(FROM AMERICAN NOTE BOOKS.) 


Salem, Oct. 4th. 

Union Street , [Family Mansion 
. . . Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, 
where I used to sit in days gone by. . . . Here I 
have written many tales,—many that have been 
burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the 
same fate. This claims to be called a haunted 
chamber, for thousands upon thousands of visions 
have appeared to me in it; and some few of them 
have become visible to the world. If ever I should 
have a biographer, he ought to make great mention 


of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of 
my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind 
and character were formed; and here I have been 
glad and hopeful, and here I have been des¬ 
pondent. And here I sat a long, long time, wait¬ 
ing patiently for the world to know me, and some¬ 
times wondering why it did not know me sooner, or 
whether it would ever know me at all,—at least, 
till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed 
as if I were already in the grave, with only life 
enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener 










180 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


I was happy,—at least, as happy as I then knew how 
to be, or was aw r are of the possibility of being. 
By and by, the world found me out in my lonely 
chamber, and called me forth,—not, indeed, with a 
loud roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small 
voice,—and forth I went, but found nothing in the 
world that I thought preferable to my old solitude 
till now. . . . And now I begin to understand why 
I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely 
chamber, and why I could never break through the 
viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made 
my escape into the world, I should have grown 
hard and rough, and been covered with earthly dust, 
and my heart might have become callous by rude 
encounters with the multitude. . . But living in 
solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still 
kept the dew of my youth, and the freshness of 
my heart. ... I used to think that I could imagine ■ 


all passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and 
mind ; but how little did I know ! . . Indeed, we are 
but shadows ; we are not endowed with real life, 
and all that seems most real about us is but the thin¬ 
nest substance of a dream,—till the heart be touched. 
That touch creates us,—then we begin to be,—there¬ 
by we are beings of reality and inheritors of 
eternity. . . 

When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, 
I think that they will be so constituted that we may 
send thoughts and feelings any distance in no time 
at all, and transfuse them, warm and fresh, into the 
consciousness of those whom we love. . . . But, 
after all, perhaps it is not wise to intermix fantas¬ 
tic ideas with the reality of affection. Let us con¬ 
tent ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold com¬ 
munion of spirit in such modes as are ordained 
to us. 


**♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ 










EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 


“ THE ROBINSON CRUSOE OF AMERICA.” 



DWARD EVERETT HALE is to-day one of the best known and 
most beloved of American authors. He is also a lecturer of note. 
He has probably addressed as many audiences as any man in America. 
H is work as a preacher, as a historian and as a story-teller, entitles 
him to fame; but his life has also been largely devoted to the forma¬ 
tion of organizations to better the moral, social and educational 
conditions of the young people of his own and other lands. Recently he has been 
deeply interested in the great Chatauqua movement, which he has done much to 
develop. 

His name is a household word in American homes, and the keynote of his useful 
life may be expressed by the motto of one of his most popular books, “Ten Times 
One is Ten:”—“Look up and not down ! Look forward and not backward! Look 
out and not in! Lend a hand ! ” 

Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, April 3, 1822. He 
graduated at Harvard University in 1839, at the age of seventeen years. He took 
a post graduate course for two years in a Latin school and read theology and church 
history. It was in 1842 that he was licensed to preach by the Boston Association 
of Congregational Ministers. During; the winter of 1844-45 he served a church in 
Washington, but removed the next year to Worcester, Massachusetts, where he 
remained for ten years. In 1856 he was called to the South Congregational 
(Unitarian) Church in Boston, which he has served for more than three decades. 

When a boy young Hale learned to set type in his father’s printing office, and 
afterwards served on the “ Daily Advertiser,” it is said, in every capacity from 
reporter up to editor-in-chief. Before he was twenty-one years old he wrote a large 
part of the “Monthly Chronicle ” and “Boston Miscellany,” and from that time to 
the present has done an immense amount of newspaper and magazine work. He 
at one time edited the “Christian Examiner” and also the “Sunday School Gazette.” 
He founded a magazine entitled “The Old and the New” in 1869, which was after¬ 
wards merged into “Scribner’s Monthly.” In 1866 he began the publication of 
“Lend a Hand, a Record of Progress and Journal of Organized Charity.” 

As a writer of short stories, no man of modern times, perhaps, is his superior, if 
indeed he has any equals. “My Double and How He Undid Me,” published in 
1859, was the first of his works to strike strongly the popular fancy; but it was 
“The Man Without a Country,” issued in 1863, which entitled its author to a prom- 

181 

























182 


EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 


inent place among the classic short story-tellers of America, and produced a deep 
impression on the public mind. His “ Skeleton in a Closet” followed in 1866; and, 
since that time his prolific pen has sent forth in the form of books and magazine 
articles, a continuous stream of the most entertaining literature in our language. 
He has the faculty of De Foe in giving to his stories the appearance of reality, and 
thus has gained for himself the title of “The Robinson Crusoe of America.” 

Mr. Hale is also an historical writer and a student of great attainment, and has 
contributed many papers of rare value to the historical and antiquarian societies of 
both Europe and America. He is, perhaps, the greatest of all living authorities 
on Spanish-American affairs. He is the editor of “Original Documents from the 
State Paper Office, London, and the British Museum; illustrating the History of 
Sir Walter Raleigh’s First American Colony at Jamestown,” and other historical 
works. 

Throughout his life, Mr. Hale has always taken a patriotic interest in public 
affairs for the general good of the nation. While he dearly loves his native New 
England hills, his patriotism is bounded by nonarrow limits; it is as wide as his 
country. His voice is always the foremost among those raised in praise or in defence 
of our national institutions and our liberties. His influence has always been exerted 
to make men and women better citizens and better Americans. 


K>*- 


LOST* 

(FROM “ PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS.”) 



UT as she ran, the path confused her. 
Could she have passed that flaming sassa¬ 
fras without so much as noticing it ? Any 
way she should recognize the great mass of bays 
where she had last noticed the panther’s tracks. She 
had seen them as she ran on, and as she came up. 
She hurried on ; but she certainly had returned 
much farther than she went, when she came out 
on a strange log flung up in some freshet, which 
she knew she had not seen before. And there was 
no clump of bays. Was this being lost ? Was she 
lost ? Why, Inez had to confess to herself that she 
was lost just a little bit, but nothing to be afraid of; 
hut still lost enough to talk about afterwards she cer¬ 
tainly was. 

Yet, as. she said to herself again and again, she 
could not be a quarter of a mile, nor half a quarter 
of a mile from camp. As soon as they missed 
her—and by this time they had missed her— 
they would be out to look for her. How provoking 
that she, of all the party, should make so much 
bother to the rest! They would watch her now 
like so many cats all the rest of the way. What 


a fool she was ever to leave the knoll! So Inez 
stopped again, shouted again, and listened and 
listened, to hear nothing but a swamp-owl. 

If the sky had been clear, she would have had no 
cause for anxiety. In that case they would have 
light enough to find her in. She would have had the 
sunset glow to steer by; and she would have had no 
difficulty in finding them. But with this horrid gray 
over everything she dared not turn round, without 
fearing that she might lose the direction in which 
the theory of the moment told her she ought to be 
faring. And these openings which she had called 
trails—which were probably broken by wild horses 
and wild oxen as they came down to the bayou to 
drink—would not go in one direction for ten paces. 
They bent right and left, this way and that; so that 
without some sure token of sun or star, it was impos¬ 
sible, as Inez felt, to know which way she was 
walking. 

And at last this perplexity increased. She was 
conscious that the sun must have set, and that the 
twilight, never long, was now fairly upon her. All 
the time there was this fearful silence, only broken 


Copyright, Roberts Bros. 










EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 


183 


by her own voice and that hateful owl. Was she 
wise to keep on in her theories of this way or that 
way ? She had never yet come back, either upon 
the fallen cottonwood tree, or upon the bunch of bays 
which was her landmark; and it was doubtless her 
wisest determination to stay where she was. The 
chances that the larger party would find her were 
much greater than that she alone would find them ; 
but by this time she was sure that, if she kept on in 
any direction, there was an even chance that she was 
going farther and farther wrong. 

But it was too cold for her to sit down, wrap her¬ 
self never so closely in her shawl. The poor girl 
tried this. She must keep in motion. Back and 
forth she walked, fixing her march by signs which 
she could not mistake even in the gathering darkness. 
How fast that darkness gathered ! The wind seemed 
to rise, too, as the night came on, and a fine rain, 
that seemed as cold as snow to her, came to give the 
last drop to her wretchedness. If she were tempted 
for a moment to abandon her sentry-beat, and try 
this wild experiment or that, to the right or left, 
some odious fallen trunk, wet with moss and decay, 
lay just where she pressed into the shrubbery, as if 
placed there to reveal to her her absolute powerless¬ 
ness. She was dead with cold, and even in all her 
wretchedness knew that she was hungry. How 
stupid to be hungry when she had so much else to 


trouble her ! But.at least she would make a system 
of her march. She would walk fifty times this way, 
to the stump, and fifty times that way ; then she 
would stop and cry out and sound her war-whoop; 
then she would take up her sentry-march again. 
And so she did. This way, at least, time would not 
pass without her knowing whether it was midnight 
or no. 

“ Hark ! God be praised, there is a gun ! and there 
is another ! and there is another ! They have come 
on the right track, and I am safe !” So she shouted 
again, and sounded her war-whoop again, and list¬ 
ened,—and then again, and listened again. One 
more gun ! but then no more! Poor Inez! Cer¬ 
tainly they were all on one side of her. If only it 
was not so piteously dark ! If she could only walk 
half the distance in that direction which her fifty 
sentry-beats made put together! But when she 
struggled that way through the tangle, and over one 
wet log and another, it was only to find her poor wet 
feet sinking down into mud and water ! She did not 
dare keep on. All that was left for her was to find 
her tramping-ground again, and this she did. 

“ Good God, take care of me! My poor dear 
father—what would he say if he knew his child was 
dying close to her friends? Dear mamma, keep 
watch over your little girl!”— 










WM. DEAN HOWELLS. 

(the REALISTIC NOVELIST OF AMERICA.) 

HE West has contributed many notable men to our nation within the 
last half of the present century. There seems to be something in 
the spirit of that developing section to stimulate the aspirations and 
ambitions of those who grow up in its atmosphere. Progress, Enter¬ 
prise, “Excelsior” are the three words written upon its banner as the 
motto for the sons of the middle West. It is there we go for many 
of our leading statesmen. Thence we draw our presidents more largely than from 
any other section, and the world of modern literature is also seeking and finding 
its cliiefest leaders among the sons and daughters of that region. True they are 
generally transplanted to the Eastern centres of publication and commercial life, 
but they Avere born and grew up in the West. 

Notably among the examples which might be cited, we mention William Dean 
Howells, one of the greatest of modern American novelists, avIio was born at Martin’s 
Ferry, Ohio, March 1st, 1837. Mr. Howells did not enjoy the advantage of a col¬ 
legiate education. At twelve years of age he began to set type in his father’s print¬ 
ing office, which he followed until he reached manhood, employing his odd time in 
writing articles and verses for the newspapers, and while quite young did editorial 
work for a leading daily in Cincinnati. At the age of twenty-one, in 1858, he 
became the editor of the “Ohio State Journal” at Columbus. Two years later he 
published in connection with John James Piatt a small volume of verse entitled 
“Poems of two Friends.” These youthful effusions were marked by that crystal 
like clearness of thought, grace and artistic elegance of expression which charac¬ 
terize his later writings. Mr. Howells came prominently before the public in 1860 
by publishing a carefully written and most excellent “Life of Abraham Lincoln” 
which was extensively sold and read during that most exciting presidential campaign, 
and no doubt contributed much to the success of the candidate. Mr. Lincoln, in 
furnishing data for this work, became well acquainted with the young author of 
twenty-three and was so impressed with his ability in grasping and discussing state 
affairs, and good sense generally, that he appointed him as cousul to Venice. 

During four years’ residence in that city Mr. HoAvells, in addition to his official 
duties, learned the Italian language and studied its literature. He also here gath¬ 
ered the material for t\vo books, “Venitian Life” and “Italian Journeys.” He 
arranged for the publication of the former in London as he passed through that city 
in 1865 on his Avay home. The latter Avas brought out in America on" his return, 

184 



/ 





























WM. DEAN HOWELLS. 


185 


appearing in 1867. Neither of these works are novels. “ Venetian Life” is a 
delightful description of the manners and customs of real life in Venice. “Italian 
Journeys” is a charming portrayal—almost a kinetoscopic view—of his journey 
from Venice to Rome by the roundabout way of Genoa and Naples, with a visit to 
Pompeii and Herculaneum, including artistic etchings of notable scenes. 

The first attempt of Mr. Howells at story-telling, “Their Wedding Journey,” ap¬ 
peared in 1871. This, while ranking as a novel, was really a description of an actual 
bridal tour across New York. “A Chance Acquaintance” (1873) was a more com¬ 
plete novel, but evidently it was a venture of the imagination upon ground that had 
proven fruitful in real life. It was modeled after “The Wedding Journey,” but 
described a holiday season spent in journeying up the St. Lawrence River, stopping 
at Quebec and Saguenay. 

Since 1874 Mr. Howells has published one or more novels annually, among which 
are the following: “A Foregone Conclusion” (1874), “A Counterfeit Presentment” 
(1877), “The Lady of the Aroostook” (1878), “The Undiscovered Country” (1880), 
“A Fearful Responsibility” (1882), “A Modern Instance” and “Dr. Breen’s Prac¬ 
tice” (1883), “A Woman’s Reason” (1884), “Tuscan Cities” and “The Rise of 
Silas Lapham” (1885), “The Minister’s Charge” and “Indian Summer” (1886), 
“April Hopes” (1887), “Annie Kilburn” (1888), “Hazard of New Fortune” (1889). 
Since 1890 Mr. Howells has continued his literary activity with increased, rather 
than abating,energy. Among his noted later novels are “A Traveler from Altruria” 
and “The Landlord at Lion’s Head” (the latter issued in 1897). Other notable 
books of his are “Stops at Various Quills,” “My Literary Passion,” “Library of 
Universal Adventure,” “Modern Italian Poets,” “Christmas Every Day” and “A 
Boy’s Town,” the two last mentioned being for juvenile readers, with illustrations. 

Mr. Howells’ accurate attention to details gives to his stories a most realistic flavor, 
making his books seem rather photographic than artistic. He shuns imposing char¬ 
acters and thrilling incidents, and makes much of interesting people and ordinary 
events in our social life. A broad grasp of our national characteristics and an inti¬ 
mate acquaintance with our institutions gives him a facility in producing minute 
studies of certain aspects of society and types of character, which no other writer 
in America has approached. For instance, his “Undiscovered Country” was an 
exhaustive study and presentation of spiritualism, as it is witnessed and taught in 
New England. And those who admire Mr. Howells’ writings will find in “The 
Landlord at Lion’s Head” a clear-cut statement of the important sociological prob¬ 
lem yet to be solved, upon the other; which problem is also characteristic of other 
of his books. Thoughtful readers of Mr. Howells’ novels gain much information on 
vital questions of society and government, which broaden the mind and cannot fail 
to be of permanent benefit. 

From 1872 to 1881 Mr. Howells was editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,” and since 
1886 he has conducted the department known as the “Editor’s Study” in “Harper’s 
Magazine,” contributing much to other periodicals at the same time. He is also well 
known as a poet, but has so overshadowed this side of himself by his greater power 
as a novelist, that he is placed with that class of writers. In 18/3 a collection of 
his poems was published. While in Venice he wrote “No Love Lost; a Romance 
of Travel,” which was published in 1869, and stamped him as a poet of ability. 



186 


WM. DEAN HOWELLS. 


THE FIRST BOARDER. 

(from “the landlord at lion’s head.” 1897 .) 
By Permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers, Publishers. 


E table was set for him alone, and it af¬ 
fected him as if the family had been hur¬ 
ried away from it that he might have it 
to himself. Everything was very simple; the iron 
forks had two prongs ; the knives bone handles ; the 
dull glass was pressed; the heavy plates and cups 
were white, but so was the cloth, and all were clean. 
The woman brought in a good boiled dinner of corned 
beef, potatoes, turnips and carrots, from the kitchen, 
and a teapot, and said something about having kept 
them hot on the stove for him; she brought him a 
plate of biscuit fresh from the oven; then she said 
to the boy, “ You come out and have your dinner 
with me, Jeff,” and left the guest to make his meal 
unmolested. 

The room was square, with two north windows 
that looked down the lane he had climbed to the 
house. An open door led into the kitchen in an ell, 
and a closed door opposite probably gave access to a 
parlor or a ground-floor chamber. The windows were 
darkened down to the lower sash by green, paper 
shades; the walls were papered in a pattern of 
brown roses; over the chimney hung a large picture, 
a life-size pencil-drawing of two little girls, one 
slightly older and slightly larger than the other, each 
with round eyes and precise ringlets, and with her 
hand clasped in the other’s hand. 

The guest seemed helpless to take his gaze from it, 
and he sat fallen back in his chair gazing at it, when 
the woman came in with a pie. 

“Thank you, I believe I don’t want any dessert,” 
he said. “ The fact is, the dinner was so good that 
I haven’t left any room for pie. Are those your 
children ?” 

“ Yes,” said the woman, looking up at the picture 
with the pie in her hand. “ They’re the last two I lost.” 

“ Oh, excuse me !” the guest began. 

“ It’s the way they appear in the spirit life. It’s a 
spirit picture.” 


“ Oh! I thought there was something strange 
about it.” 

“ Well, it’s a good deal like the photographs we 
had taken about a year before they died. It’s a good 
likeness. They say they don’t change a great deal, 
at first.” 

She seemed to refer the point to him for his judg¬ 
ment ; but he answered wide of it: 

“ I came up here to paint your mountain, if you 
don’t mind, Mrs. Durgin—Lion’s Head, I mean.” 

“ Oh, yes. Well I don’t know as we could stop 
you, if you wanted to take it away.” A spare glim¬ 
mer lighted up her face. 

The painter rejoined in kind. “ The town might 
have something to say, I suppose.” 

“ Not if you was to leave a good piece of intervale 
in place of it. We’ve got mountains to spare.” 

“ Well, then, that’s arranged. What about a 
week’s board?” 

“ I guess you can stay, if you’re satisfied.” 

“ I’ll be satisfied if I can stay. How much do 
you want?” 

The woman looked down, probably with an inward 
anxiety between the fear of asking too much and the 
folly of asking too little. She said, tentatively, 
“ Some of the folks that come over from the hotels 
say they pay as much as twenty dollars a week.” 

“ But you don’t expect hotel prices?” 

“ I don’t know as I do. We’ve never had any 
body before.” 

The stranger relaxed the frown he had put on at 
the greed of her suggestion; it might have come 
from ignorance or mere innocence, “ I’m in the habit 
of paying five dollars for farm board, where I stayed 
several week’s. What do you say to seven for a 
single week ?” 

“ I guess that’ll do,” said the woman, and she went 
out with the pie, which she had kept in her hand. 








WM. DEAN HOWELLS. 


187 


IMPRESSIONS ON VISITING POMPEII* 

FROM “ ITALIAN JOURNEYS.” 1867 . 


HE cotton whitens over two-thirds of Pom¬ 
peii yet interred : happy the generation 
that lives to learn the wondrous secrets of 
that sepulchre ! For, when you have once been at 
Pompeii, this phantasm of the past takes deeper hold 
on your imagination than any living city, and becomes 
and is the metropolis of your dream-land forever. 
O marvellous city ! who shall reveal the cunning of 
your spell ? Something not death, something not 
life,—something that is the one when you turn to 
determine its essence as the other ! What is it comes 
to me at this distance of that which I saw in Pom¬ 
peii ? The narrow and curving, but not crooked 
streets, with the blazing sun of that Neapolitan 
November falling into them, or clouding their wheel- 
worn lava with the black, black shadows of the 
many-tinted walls ; the houses, and the gay columns 
of white, yellow, and red ; the delicate pavements of 
mosaic; the skeletons of dusty cisterns and dead 
fountains; inanimate garden-spaces with pygmy 
statues suited to their littleness ; suites of fairy bed¬ 
chambers, painted with exquisite frescos; dining- 
halls with joyous scenes of hunt and banquet on 
their walls ; the ruinous sites of temples ; the melan¬ 
choly emptiness of booths and shops and jolly drink¬ 
ing-houses ; the lonesome tragic theatre, with a mod¬ 
ern Pompeian drawing water from a well there; the 
baths with their roofs perfect yet, and the stucco 
bass-reliefs all but unharmed ; around the whole, the 
city wall crowned with slender poplars; outside the 
gates, the long avenue of tombs, and the Appian 
Way stretching on to Stabiae; and, in the distance, 
Vesuvius, brown and bare, with his fiery breath 
scarce visible against the cloudless heaven ; these are 
the things that float before my fancy as I turn back 
to look at myself walking those enchanted streets, 
and to wonder if I could ever have been so blest. 
For there is nothing on the earth, or under it, like 
Pompeii. . . . 

THE HOUSES OF POMPEII AND THEIR PAINTED 

WALLS. 

From “ Italian Journeys .” 

The plans of nearly all the houses in the city are 


alike: the entrance-room next the door ; the parlor 
or drawing-room next that; then the impluvium , or 
unroofed space in the middle of the house, where the 
rains were caught and drained into the cistern, and 
where the household used to come to wash itself, 
primitively, as at a pump; the little garden, with its 
painted columns, behind the impluvium , and, at last, 
the dining-room. 

After referring to the frescos on the walls that 
have remained for nearly two thousand years and the 
wonder of the art by which they were produced, 
Mr. Howells thus continues : 

Of course the houses of the rich were adorned by 
men of talent; but it is surprising to see the com¬ 
munity of thought and feeling in all this work, 
whether it be from cunninger or clumsier hands. The 
subjects are nearly always chosen from the fables of 
the gods, and they are in illustration of the poets, 
Homer and the rest. To suit that soft, luxurious 
life which people led in Pompeii, the themes are 
commonly amorous, and sometimes not too chaste: 
there is much of Bacchus and Ariadne, much of 
Venus and Adonis, and Diana bathes a good deal 
with her nymphs,—not to mention frequent represen¬ 
tations of the toilet of that beautiful monster which 
the lascivious art of the time loved to depict. One 
of the most pleasing of all the scenes is that in one 
of the houses, of the Judgment of Paris, in which 
the shepherd sits upon a bank in an attitude of 
ineffable and flattered importance, with one leg care¬ 
lessly crossing the other, and both hands resting 
lightly on his shepherd’s crook, while the goddesses 
before him await his sentence. Naturally, the 
painter has done his best for the victress in this 
rivalry, and you see 

“ Idalian Aphrodite beautiful,” 

as she should be, but with a warm and piquant spice of 
girlish resentment in her attitude, that Paris should 
pause for an instant, which is altogether delicious. 

“And I beheld great Here’s angry eyes.” 



|f Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin Co. 







188 


WM. DEAN HOWELLS. 


Awful eyes! How did the painter make them? 
The wonder of all these pagan frescos is the mystery 
of the eyes,—still, beautiful, unhuman. You can¬ 
not believe that it is wrong for those tranquil-eyed 
men and women to do evil, they look so calm and so 
unconscious in it all; and in the presence of the 
celestials, as they bend upon you those eternal orbs, 
in whose regard you are but a part of space, you feel 
that here art has achieved the unearthly. I know of 


no words in literature which give a sense (nothing 
gives the idea) of the stare of these gods, except 
that magnificent line of Kingsley’s, describing the 
advance over the sea toward Andromeda of the 
oblivious and unsympathizing Nereids. They floated 
slowly up and their eyes 

“Stared on her, silent and still, like the eyes in the 
house of the idols." 




VENETIAN VAGABONDS* 
(FROM “VENETIAN LIFE.” 1867 .) 


HE lasagnone is a loafer, as an Italian can 
be a loafer, without the admixture of 
ruffianism, which blemishes lost loafers of 
northern race. He may be quite worthless, and even 
impertinent, but he cannot be a rowdy—that pleasing 
blossom on the nose of our fast, high-fed, thick- 
blooded civilization. In Venice he must not be 
confounded with other loiterers at the cafe; not 
with the natty people who talk politics interminably 
over little cups of black coffee; not with those old 
habitues, who sit forever under the Procuratie, their 
hands folded upon the top of their sticks, and stare 
at the ladies who pass with a curious steadfastness 
and knowing skepticism of gaze, not pleasing in the 
dim eyes of age; certainly, the last persons who bear 
any likeness to the lasagnone are the Germans, with 
their honest, heavy faces comically anglicized by leg- 
of-mutton whiskers. The truth is, the lasagnone 
does not flourish in the best cafe ; he comes to per¬ 
fection in cheaper resorts, for he is commonly not 
rich. 

It often happens that a glass of water, flavored with 
a little anisette, is the order over which he sits a 
whole evening. He knows the waiter intimately, and 
does not call him “ Shop ! ” (Bottega) as less familiar 
people do, but Gigi, or Beppi, as the waiter is pretty 
sure to be named. “ Behold! ” he says, when the 
servant places his modest drink before him, “ who is 
that loveliest blonde there ? ” Or to his fellow-lasag- 
none : “ She regards me ! I have broken her heart! ” 
This is his sole business and mission, the cruel lasag¬ 



none—to break the ladies’ hearts. He spares no 
condition—neither rank nor wealth is any defence 
against him. I often wonder what is in that note he 
continually shows to his friend. The confession of 
some broken heart, I think. When he has folded 
it and put it away, he chuckles, “ Ah, cara ! ” and 
sucks at his long, slender Virginia cigar. It is 
unlighted, for fire consumes cigars. I never see 
him read the papers—neither the Italian papers nor 
the Parisian journals, though if he can get “ Galig- 
nani ” he is glad, and he likes to pretend to a knowl¬ 
edge of English, uttering upon the occasion, with 
great relish, such distinctively English words as 
“ Yes ” and “ Not,” and to the waiter, “ A-little-fire- 
if-you-please.” He sits very late in the cafe, he 
touches his hat—his curly French hat—to the com¬ 
pany as he goes out with a mild swagger, his cane 
held lightly in his left hand, his coat cut snugly to 
show his hips, and genteely swaying with the motion 
of his body. He is a dandy, of course—all Italians 
are dandies—but his vanity is perfectly harmless, and 
his heart is not bad. He would go half an hour 
to put you in the direction of the Piazza. A little 
thing can make him happy—to stand in the pit at 
the opera, and gaze at the ladies in the lower boxes 
—to attend the Marionette or the Malibran Theatre, 
and imperil the peace of pretty seamstresses and con- 
tadinas—to stand at the church doors and ogle the 
fair saints as they pass out. Go, harmless lasagnone, 
to thy lodging in some mysterious height, and break 
hearts if thou wilt. They are quickly mended. 


* By special permission of the author and of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 











GENERAL LEWIS WALLACE. 


AUTHOR OF “ BEN HUE.” 



HERE is an old adage which declares “without fame or fortune at 
forty, without fame or fortune always." This, however is not invar¬ 
iably true. Hawthorne became famous when he wrote “Scarlet 
Letter" at forty-six, Sir Walter Scott produced the first Waverly 
Novel after he was forty; and we find another exception in the case 
of the soldier author who is made the subject of this sketch. Per¬ 
haps no writer of modern times has gained so wide a reputation on so few hooks 
or began his literary career so late in life as the author of “The Fair God;" “Ben 
Hur" and “The Prince of India." It was not until the year 1873 that General 
Lewis Wallace at the age of forty-six became known to literature. Prior to this he 
had filled the double position of lawyer and soldier, and it was his observations and 
experiences in the Mexican War, no doubt, which inspired him to write “The Fair 
God," his first book, which was a story of the conquest of that country. 

Lew. Wallace was born at Brookville, Indiana, in 1827. After receiving a com¬ 
mon school education, he began the study of law; but on the breaking out of the 
Mexican War, he volunteered in the army as a lieutenant in an Indiana company. 
On his return from the war, in 1848, he took up the practice of his profession in 
his native state and also served in the legislature. Near the beginning of the Civil 
War he became colonel of a volunteer regiment. His military service was of such 
a character that he received special mention from General Grant for meritorious 
conduct and was made major-general in March, 1862. He was mustered out of 
service when the war closed in 1865 and resumed his practice of law at his old 
home in Crawfordsville. In 1873, as stated above, his first book, “The Fair God," 
was published; but it met with only moderate success. In 1878, General Wallace 
was made Territorial Governor of Utah and in 1880, “Ben Hur; a Tale of The 
Christ" appeared. The scene was laid in the East and displayed such a knowledge 
of the manners and customs of that country and people that General Garfield—that 
year elected President—considered its author a fitting person for the Turkish 
Ministry, and accordingly, in 1881, he was appointed to that position. It is said 
that when President Garfield gave General Wallace his appointment, he wrote the 
words “Ben Hur" across the corner of the document, and, as Wallace was coming 
away from his visit of acknowledgement at the White House, the President put his 
arm over his friend’s shoulder and said, “I expect another book out of you. Your 
duties will not be too onerous to allow you to write it. Locate the scene in 

189 































190 


GENERAL LEWIS WALLACE. 


Constantinople.” This suggestion was, no doubt, General Wallace’s reason for 
writing “ The Prince of India,” which was published in 1890 and is the last 
book issued by its author. He had in the mean time, however, published “ The 
Boyhood of Christ” (1888). 

None of the other books of the author have been so popular or reached the great 
success attained by “ Ben Hur,” which has had the enormous sale of nearly one-half 
million copies without at any time being forced upon the market in the form of a 
cheap edition. It is remarkable also to state that the early circulation of “ Ben 
Hur,” while it was appreciated by a certain class, was too small to warrant the 
author in anticipating the fortune which he afterwards harvested from this book. 
Before General Wallace was made Minister to Turkey, the book-sellers bought it in 
quantities of two, three or a dozen at a time, and it was not until President Garfield 
had honored the author with this significent portfolio that the trade commenced to 
call for it in thousand lots. 


DESCRIPTION OF CHRIST* 

(FROM “ BEN HUR.” 1880 .) 


HE head was open to the cloudless light, ex¬ 
cept as it was draped with long hair and 
slightly waved, and parted in the middle, 
and auburn in tint, with a tendency to reddish golden 
where most strongly touched by the sun. Under a 
broad, low forehead, under black well-arched brows, 
beamed eyes dark blue and large, and softened to ex¬ 
ceeding tenderness by lashes of great length some¬ 
times seen on children, but seldom, if ever, on men. 
As to the other features, it would have been difficult 
to decide whether they were Greek or Jewish. The 
delicacy of the nostrils and mouth was unusually to 
the latter type, and when it was taken into account 
with the gentleness of the eyes, the pallor of the 
complexion, the fine texture of the hair and the soft¬ 
ness of the beard, which fell in waves over His throat 
to His breast, never a soldier but would have laughed 
at Him in encounter, never a woman who would not 
have confided in Him at sight, never a child that 


would not, with quick instinct, have given Him its 
hand and whole artless trust, nor might any one have 
said He was not beautiful. 

The features, it should be further said, were ruled 
by a certain expression which, as the viewer chose, 
might with equal correctness have been called the 
effect of intelligence, love, pity or sorrow, though, in 
better speech, it was a blending of them all—a look 
easy to fancy as a mark of a sinless soul doomed to 
the sight and understanding of the utter sinfulness 
of those among whom it was passing ; yet withal no 
one could have observed the face with a thought 
of weakness in the man; so, at least, would not 
they who know that the qualities mentioned—love, 
sorrow, pity—are the results of a consciousness of 
strength to bear suffering oftener than strength to do ; 
such has been the might of martyrs and devotees 
and the myriads written down in saintly calendars; 
and such, indeed, was the air of this one. 

40 #- 



THE PRINCE OF INDIA TEACHES REINCARNATION* 

(FROM THE “ PRINCE OF INDIA.” 1890 .) 


HE Holy Father of Light and Life,” the 
speaker went on, after a pause referable 
to his consummate knowledge of men, 
u has sent His Spirit down to the world, not once, 
merely, or unto one people, but repeatedly, in ages 



sometimes near together, sometimes wide apart, and 
to races diverse, yet in every instance remarkable for 
genius.” 

There was a murmur at this, but he gave it no 
time. 


* Selections printed here are by special permission of the author. Harper Brothers, Publishers. 















GENERAL LEWIS WALLACE. 


191 


“ Ask you now how I could identify the Spiritt 
so as to be able to declare to you solemnly, as I 
do in fear of God, that in several repeated appear¬ 
ances of which I speak it was the very same 
Spirit ? How do you know the man you met at set 
of sun yesterday was the man you saluted and had 
salute from this morning ? Well, I tell you the 
Father has given the Spirit features by which it 
may be known—features distinct as those of the 
neighbors nearest you there at your right and left 
hands. Wherever in my reading Holy Books, like 
these, I hear of a man, himself a shining example 
of righteousness, teaching God and the way to 
God ; by those signs I say to my soul: ‘Oh, the 
Spirit, the Spirit! Blessed in the man appointed to 

carrv it about!’ ” 

•/ 

Again the murmur, but again he passed on. 

“The Spirit dwelt in the Holy of Holies set apart 
for it in the Tabernacle; yet no man ever saw it 


here, a thing of sight. The soul is not to be seen ; 
still less is the Spirit of the Most High; or if one 
did see it, its brightness would kill him. In great 
mercy, therefore, it has come and done its good 
works in the world veiled ; now in one form, now in 
another; at one time, a voice in the air; at another, 
a vision in sleep; at another, a burning bush ; at 
another, an angel; at another, a descending dove ”— 

“Bethabara!” shouted a cowled brother, tossing 
both hands up. 

“ Be quiet! ” the Patriarch ordered. 

“ Thus always w T hen its errand was of quick de¬ 
spatch,” the Prince continued. “ But if its coming 
w r ere for residence on earth, then its habit has been 
to adopt a man for its outward form, and enter into 
him, and speak by him; such was Moses, such 
Elijah, such were all the Prophets, and such ”—he 
paused, then exclaimed shrilly—“ such was Jesus 
Christ! ” 


-*<>•- 


THE PRAYER OF THE WANDERING JEW* 


(FROM THE “ PRINCE OF INDIA.”) 


OD of Israel—my God ! ” he said, in a tone 
hardly more than speaking to himself. 
“ These about me, my fellow-creatures, 
pray thee in the hope of life, I pray thee in the 
hope of death. I have come up from the sea, and 
the end was not there; now I will go into the Desert 



in search of it. Or if I must live, Lord, give me the 
happiness there is in serving thee. 

“ Thou hast need of instruments of good: let me 
henceforth be one of them, that by working for thy 
honor, I may at last enjoy the peace of the blessed— 
Amen.” 


DEATH OF MONTEZUMA* 

(from “ THE FAIR GOD.”) 



j|HE king turned his pale face and fixed his 
gazing eyes upon the conqueror ; and such 
power was there in the look that the latter 
added, with softening manner, “ What I can do for 
thee I will do. I have always been thy true friend.” 

“ 0 Malinche, I hear you, and your words make 
dying easy,” answered Montezuma, smiling faintly. 

With an effort he sought Cortes’ hand, and looking 
at Acatlan and Tecalco, continued: 

“ Let me intrust these women and their children 
to you and your lord. Of all that which was mine 


but now is yours—lands, people, empire,—enough 
to save them from want and shame were small in¬ 
deed. Promise me; in the hearing of all these, 
promise, Malinche.” 

Taint of anger was there no longer on the soul of 
the great Spaniard. 

“ Rest thee, good king! ” he said, with feeling. 
“ Thy queens and their children shall be my wards. 
In the hearing of all these, I so swear.” 

The listener smiled again; his eyes closed, his 
hand fell down; and so still was he that they began 


# Copyright, Harper <fc Bros. 




















192 


GENERAL LEWIS WALLACE. 


to think him dead. Suddenly he stirred, and said 
faintly, but distinctly,— 

“ Nearer, uncles, nearer.” The old men bent over 
him, listening. 

“ A message to Guatamozin,—to whom I give my 
last thought, as king. Say to him, that this linger¬ 
ing in death is no fault of his ; the aim was true, but 
the arrow splintered upon leaving the bow. And 
lest the world hold him to account for my blood, hear 


me say, all of you, that I bade him do what 
he did. 

And in sign that I love him, take my sceptre, and 
give it to him—” 

His voice fell away, yet the lips moved; lower the 
accents stooped,— 

“ Tula and the empire go with the sceptre,” he 
murmured, and they were his last words,—his will. 
A wail from the women pronounced him dead. 


-♦O* 


DESCRIPTION OF VIRGIN MARY* 


(FROM “ BEN HUR.”) 


HE was not more than fifteen. Her form, 
voice and manner belonged to the period 
of transition from girlhood. Her face 
was perfectly oval, her complexion more pale than 
fair. The nose was faultless ; the lips, slightly parted, 
were full and ripe, giving to the lines of the mouth 
warmth, tenderness and trust; the eyes were blue 
and large, and shaded by drooping lids and long 
lashes, and, in harmony with all, a flood of golden 
hair, in the style permitted to Jewish brides, fell un¬ 
confined down her back to the pillion on which she 
sat. The throat and neck had the downy softness 
sometimes seen which leaves the artist in doubt 



whether it is an effect of contour or color. To these 
charms of feature and person were added others more 
indefinable—an air of purity which only the soul can 
impart, and of abstraction natural to such as think 
much of things impalpable. Often, with trembling 
lips, she raised her eyes to heaven, itself not more 
deeply blue ; often she crossed her hands upon her 
breast, as in adoration and prayer ; often she raised 
her head like one listening eagerly for a calling 
voice. Now and then, midst his slow utterances, 
Joseph turned to look at her, and, catching the ex¬ 
pression kindling her face as with light, forgot his 
theme, and with bowed head, wondering, plodded on. 


* Copyright, Harper &, Bros. 











EDWARD EGGLESTON. 


“the hoosier school-boy.” 



ERDER says with truth that “ one’s whole life is but the interpreta¬ 
tion of the oracles of his childhood,” and those who are familiar with 
the writings of Edward Eggleston see in his pictures of country life 
in the Hoosier State the interpretation and illustration of his own 
life with its peculiar environment in “ the great interior valley ” 
nearly a half-century ago. The writers who have interpreted for us 
and for future generations the life and the characteristic manners which prevailed in 
the days when our country was new and the forests were yielding to give place to 
growing cities and expanding farms have done a rare and peculiar service, and those 
sections which have found expression through the genius and gifts of novelist or 
poet are highly favored above all others. 

Edward Eggleston has always counted it a piece of good-fortune to have been 
born in a small village of Southern Indiana, for he believes that the formative influ¬ 
ences of such an environment, the intimate knowledge of simple human nature, the 
close acquaintance with nature in woods and field and stream, and the sincere and 
earnest tone of the religious atmosphere which he breathed all through his youth, are 
better elements of culture than a city life could have furnished. 

He was born in 1837 in Yevay , Indiana, and his early life was spent amid the 
“ noble scenery ” on the banks of the Ohio River. His father died while he was a 
young boy, and he himself was too delicate to spend much time at school, so that he 
is a shining example of those who move up the inclined plane of self-culture and 
self-improvement. 

As he himself has forcefully said, through his whole life two men have 
struggled within him for the ascendency, the religious devotee and the literary man. 
His early training was “ after the straitest sect of his religion ”—the fervid Metho¬ 
dism of fifty years ago, and he was almost morbidly scrupulous as a boy, not even 
allowing himself to read a novel, though from this early period he always felt in 
himself a future literary career, and the teacher who corrected his compositions 
naively said to him : “ I have marked your composition very severely because you 
are destined to become an author.” 

At first the religious element in his nature decidedly held sway and he devoted 
himself to the ministry, mounting a horse and going forth with his saddle-bags as a 
circuit preacher in a circuit of ten preaching places. This was followed by a still 
harder experience in the border country of Minnesota, where in moccasins he 


T 3 


193 























194 


EDWARD EGGLESTON. 


tramped from town to town preaching to lumbermen and living on a meagre pit¬ 
tance, eating crackers and cheese, often in broken health and expecting an early 
death. 

But even this earnest life of religious devotion and sacrifice was interspersed with 
attempts at literary work and he wrote a critical essay on “ Beranger and his Songs ” 
while he was trying to evangelize the red-sliirted lumbermen of St. Croix. It was 
in such life and amid such experiences that Eggleston gained his keen knowledge 
of human nature which has been the delight and charm of his books. 

He began his literary career as associate editor of the “Little Corporal” at 
Evanston, Illinois, in 1866, and in 1870 he rose to the position of literary editor of 
the New York “Independent,” of which he was for a time superintending editor. 
For five years, from 1874 to 1879, he was pastor of the Church of Christian En¬ 
deavor in Brooklyn, but failing health compelled him to retire, and he made his 
home at “Owl’s Nest,” on Lake George, where he has since devoted himself to 
literary work. 

His novels depict the rural life of Southern Indiana, and his own judgment upon 
them is as follows: “I should say that what distinguishes my novels from other 
works of fiction is the prominence which they give to social conditions; that the 
individual characters are here treated to a greater degree than elsewhere as parts of 
a study of a society, as in some sense the logical result of the environment. What¬ 
ever may be the rank assigned to these stories as works of literary art, they will 
always have a certain value as materials for the student of social history.” 

His chief novels and stories are the following: “Mr. Blake’s Walking Stick” 
(Chicago, 1869); “The Hoosier School-master” (New York, 1871);” “End of the 
World” (1872); “The Mystery of Metropolisville” (1873); “The Circuit Bider” 
(1874); “School-master’s Stories for Boys and Girls” (1874); and “The Hoosier 
School-boy” (1883). He has written in connection with his daughter an interest¬ 
ing series of biographical tales of famous American Indians, and during these later 
years of his life he has largely devoted himself to historical work which has had an 
attraction for him all his life. 

In his historical work as in his novels he is especially occupied with the evolu¬ 
tion of society. His interest runs in the line of unfolding the history of life and 
development rather than in giving mere facts of political history. 

His chief works in this department are: “Household History of the United 
States and its People” (New York, 1893); and “The Beginners of a Nation” (New 
York, 1897). 

Though possessed of a weak and ailing body and always on the verge of invalid¬ 
ism, he has done the work of a strong man. He has always preserved his deep and 
earnest religious and moral tone, but he has woven with it a joyous and genuine 
humor which has warmed the hearts of his many readers. 


EDWARD EGGLESTON. 


195 


(from 


SPELLING DOWN THE MASTER* 

(ORANGE JUDD CO., PUBLISHERS.) 


“THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER.” 



VERY family furnished a candle. There 
were yellow dips and white dips, burning, 
smoking, and flaring. There was laugh¬ 
ing, and talking, and giggling, and simpering, and 
ogling, and flirting, and courting. What a dress 
party is to Fifth Avenue, a spelling-school is to 
Hoophole County. It is an occasion which is meta¬ 
phorically inscribed with this legend, “ Choose your 
partners.” Spelling is only a blind in Hoophole 
County, as is dancing on Fifth Avenue. But as 
there are some in society who love dancing for its 
own sake, so in Flat Creek district there were those 
who loved spelling for its own sake, and who, smell¬ 
ing the battle from afar, had come to try their skill 
in this tournament, hoping to freshen the laurels they 
had won in their school-days. 

“ I ’low,” said Mr. Means, speaking as the prin¬ 
cipal school trustee, “ I ’low our friend the Square is 
jest the man to boss this ere consarn to-night. Ef 
nobody objects, I'll appint him. Come, Square, 
don’t be bashful. Walk up to the trough, fodder or 
no fodder, as the man said to his donkey.” 

There was a general giggle at this, and many of 
the young swains took occasion to nudge the girls 
alongside them, ostensibly for the purpose of making 
them see the joke, but really for the pure pleasure 
of nudging. 

The squire came to the front. 

“ Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, shoving up his 
spectacles, and sucking his lips over his white teeth 
to keep them in place, “ladies and gentlemen, young 
men and maidens, raley I’m obleeged to Mr. Means 
fer this honor,” and the Squire took both hands and 
turned the top of his head round several inches. 
Then he adjusted his spectacles. Whether he was 
obliged to Mr. Means for the honor of being com- 
pared to a donkey, was not clear. “ I feel in the 
inmost compartments of my animal spirits a most 
happyfying sense of the success and futility of all my 
endeavors to sarve the people of Flat Creek deestrick, 
and the people of Tomkins township, in my weak way 
and manner.” This burst of eloquence was delivered 
with a constrained air and an apparent sense of 
danger that he, Squire Hawkins, might fall to pieces 
in his weak way and manner, and of the success and 


futility (especially the latter) of all attempts at recon¬ 
struction. For by this time the ghastly pupil of the 
left eye, which was black, was looking away round to 
the left while the little blue one on the right twinkled 
cheerfully toward the front. The front teeth would 
drop down so that the Squire’s mouth was kept nearly 
closed, and his words whistled through. 

“ I feel as if I could be grandiloquent on this 
interesting occasion,” twisting his scalp round, “but 
raley I must forego any such exertions. It is spelling 
you want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand, 
underlying subterfuge of a good eddication. I put 
the spellin’-book prepared by the great Daniel Web¬ 
ster alongside the Bible. I do raley. The man who 
got up, who compounded this little work of inextri¬ 
cable valoo was a benufactor to the whole human 
race or any other.” Here the spectacles fell off. 
The Squire replaced them in some confusion, gave 
the top of his head another twist, and felt for his 
glass eye, while poor Shocky stared in wonder, and 
Betsy Short rolled from side to side at the point of 
death from the effort to suppress her giggle. Mrs. 
Means and the other old ladies looked the applause 
they could not speak. 

“ I appint Larkin Lanham and Jeerns Buchanan 
fer captings,” said the Squire. And the two young 
men thus named took a stick and tossed it from hand 
to hand to decide who should have the “ first chice.” 
One tossed the stick to the other, who held it fast 
just where he happened to catch it. Then the first 
placed his hand above the second, and so the hands 
were alternately changed to the top. The one who 
held the stick last without room for the other to take 
hold had gained the lot. This was tried three times. 
As Larkin held the stick twice out of three times, he 
had the choice. He hesitated a moment. Every¬ 
body looked toward tall Jim Phillips. But Larkin 
was fond of a venture on unknown seas, and so he 
said, “ I take the master,” while a buzz of surprise 
ran round the room, and the captain of the other 
side, as if afraid his opponent would withdraw the 
choice, retorted quickly, and with a little smack of 
exultation and defiance in his voice: “ And I take 
Jeems Phillips.” 

And soon all present, except a few of the old folks, 


* Copyright, Orange Judd Co. 







196 


EDWARD EGGLESTON. 


found themselves ranged in opposing hosts, the poor 
spellers lagging in, with what grace they could at the 
foot of the two divisions. The Squire opened his 
spelling-book and began to give out the words to the 
two captains, who stood up and spelled against each 
other. It was not long before Larkin spelled “ really ” 
with one /, and had to sit down in confusion, while a 
murmur of satisfaction ran through the ranks of the 
opposing forces. His own side bit their lips. The 
slender figure of the young teacher took the place 
of the fallen leader, and the excitement made the 
house very quiet. Ralph dreaded the loss of influ¬ 
ence he would suffer if he should be easily spelled 
down. And at the moment of rising he saw in the 
darkest corner the figure of a well-dressed young man 
sitting in the shadow. It made him tremble. Why 
should his evil genius haunt him ? But by a strong 
effort he turned his attention away from Dr. Small, 
and listened carefully to the words which the Squire 
did not pronounce very distinctly, spelling them with 
extreme deliberation. This gave him an air of hesi¬ 
tation which disappointed those on his own side. 
They wanted him to spell with a dashing assurance. 
But he did not begin a word until he had mentally 
felt his way through it. After ten minutes of spell¬ 
ing hard words, Jeems Buchanan, the captain of the 
other side, spelled “atrocious” with an s instead of a 
c. and subsided, his first choice, Jeems Phillips, com¬ 
ing up against the teacher. This brought the excite¬ 
ment to fever-heat. For though Ralph was chosen 
first, it was entirely on trust, and most of the com¬ 
pany were disappointed. The champion who now 
stood up against the school-master was a famous 
speller. 

Jim Phillips was a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered fellow, 
who had never distinguished himself in any other 
pursuit than spelling. Except in this one art of 
spelling he was of no account. He could neither 
catch a ball well nor bat well. He could not throw 
well enough to make his mark in that famous West¬ 
ern game of Bull-pen. He did not succeed well in 
any study but that of Webster’s Elementary. But 
in that—to use the usual Flat Creek locution—he 
was “a hoss.” The genius for spelling is in some 
people a sixth sense, a matter of intuition. Some 
spellers are born and not made, and their facility 
reminds one of the mathematical prodigies that crop 


out every now and then to bewilder the world. Bud 
Means, foreseeing that Ralph would be pitted against 
Jim Phillips, had warned his friend that Jim could 
spell “ like thunder and lightning,” and that it “ took 
a powerful smart speller” to beat him, for he knew 
“a heap of spelling-book.” To have “spelled down 
the master ” is next thing to having whipped the 
biggest bully in Hoophole County, and Jim had 
“ spelled down ” the last three masters. He divided 
the hero-worship of the district with Bud Means. 

For half an hour the Squire gave out hard words. 
What a blessed thing our crooked orthography is. 
Without it there could be no spelling-schools. As 
Ralph discovered his opponent’s mettle he became 
more and more cautious. He was now satisfied that 
Jim would eventually beat him. The fellow evidently 
knew more about the spelling-book than old Noah 
Webster himself. As he stood there, with his dull 
face and long sharp nose, his hands behind his back, 
and his voice spelling infallibly, it seemed to Hart- 
sook that his superiority must lie in his nose. Ralph’s 
cautiousness answered a double purpose ; it enabled 
him to tread surely, and it was mistaken by Jim for 
weakness. Phillips was now confident that he should 
carry off the scalp of the fourth school-master before 
the evening was over. He spelled eagerly, confidently, 
brilliantly. Stoop-shouldered as he was, he began to 
straighten up. In the minds of all the company the 
odds were in his favor. He saw this, and became 
ambitious to distinguish himself by spelling without 
giving the matter any thought. 

Ralph always believed that he would have been 
speedily defeated by Phillips had it not been for two 
thoughts which braced him. The sinister shadow of 
young Dr. Small sitting in the dark corner by the 
water-bucket nerved him. A victory over Phillips 
was a defeat to one who wished only ill to the young 
school-master. The other thought that kept his 
pluck alive was the recollection of Bull. He ap¬ 
proached a word as Bull approached the raccoon. He 
did not take hold until he was sure of his game. 
When he took hold, it was with a quiet assurance of 
success. As Ralph spelled in this dogged way for 
half an hour the hardest words the Squire could find, 
the excitement steadily rose in all parts of the house, 
and Ralph’s friends even ventured to whisper that 
“ maybe Jim had cotched his match after all! ” 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 


197 


But Phillips never doubted of his success. 

“ Theodolite,” said the Squire. 

“ T-h-e, the, o-d, od, theod, o, theodo, 1-y-t-e, 
theodolite,” spelled the champion. 

“ Next,” said the Squire, nearly losing his teeth in 
his excitement. 

Ralph spelled the word slowly and correctly, and 
the conquered champion sat down in confusion. The 
excitement was so great for some minutes that the 
spelling was suspended. Everybody in the house 
had shown sympathy with one or other of the com¬ 
batants, except the silent shadow in the corner. It 
had not moved during the contest, and did not show 
any interest now in the result. 

“ Gewhilliky crickets ! Thunder and lightning ! 
Licked him all to smash!” said Bud, rubbing his 
hands on his knees. “ That beats my time all 
holler! ” 

And Betsy Short giggled until her tuck-comb fell 
out, though she was on the defeated side. 

Shocky got up and danced with pleasure. 

But one suffocating look from the aqueous eyes 
of Mirandy destroyed the last spark of Ralph’s 
pleasure in his triumph, and sent that awful below- 
zero feeling all through him. 

u He’s powerful smart is the master,” said old Jack 
to Mr. Pete Jones. “ He’ll beat the whole kit and 
tuck of ’em afore he's through. I know’d he was 
smart. That’s the reason I tuck him,” proceeded 
Mr. Means. 

“ Yaas, but he don’t lick enough. Not nigh,” 
answered Pete Jones. “ No lickin’, no lamin’, says I.” 

It was now not so hard. The other spellers on 
the opposite side went down quickly under the hard 
words which the Squire gave out. The master had 
mowed down all but a few, his opponents had given 
up the battle, and all had lost their keen interest in 
a contest to which there could be but one conclusion, 
for there were only the poor spellers left. But Ralph 
Hartsook ran against a stump where he was least ex¬ 
pecting it. It was the Squire’s custom, when one of 
the smaller scholars or poorer spellers rose to spell 
against the master, to give out eight or ten easy words 
that they might have some breathing spell before being 
slaughtered, and then to give a poser or two which soon 
settled them. He let them run a little, as a cat does 
a doomed mouse. There was now but one person 


left on the opposite side, and as she rose in her 
blue calico dress, Ralph recognized Hannah, the 
bound girl at old Jack Means's. She had not 
attended school in the district, and had never 
spelled in spelling-school before, and was chosen 
last as an uncertain quantity. The Squire began 
with easy words of two syllables, from that page of 
Webster, so well-known to all who ever thumbed 
it, as “ Baker,” from the word that stands at the 
top of the page. She spelled these words in an 
absent and uninterested manner. As everybody 
knew that she would have to go down as soon as 
this preliminary skirmishing was over, everybody 
began to get ready to go home, and already there was 
a buzz of preparation. Young men were timidly 
asking girls if they could “ see them safe home,” 
which is the approved formula, and were trembling 
in mortal fear of “ the mitten.” Presently the 
Squire, thinking it time to close the contest, pulled 
his scalp forward, adjusted his glass eye, which had 
been examining his nose long enough, and turned 
over the leaves of the book to the great words at 
the place known to spellers as “ Incomprehensibility,” 
and began to give out those “ words of eight syllables 
with the accent on the sixth.” Listless scholars now 
turned round, and ceased to whisper, in order to be 
in the master’s final triumph. But to their surprise, 
“ ole Miss Meanses’ white nigger,” as some of them 
called her, in allusion to her slavish life, spelled these 
great words with as perfect ease as the master. Still, 
not doubting the result, the Squire turned from place 
to place and selected all the hard words he could find. 
The school became utterly quiet, the excitement was 
too great for the ordinary buzz. Would “ Meanses’ 
Hanner” beat the master? Beat the master that 
had laid out Jim Phillips? Everybody’s sympathy 
was now turned to Hannah. Ralph noticed that even 
Shocky had deserted him, and that his face grew 
brilliant every time Hannah spelled a word. In fact, 
Ralph deserted himself. If he had not felt that 
a victory given would insult her, he would have 
missed intentionally. 

“ Daguerreotype,” sniffled the Squire. It was 
Ralph’s turn. 

“ D-a-u, dau-” 

“ Next.” 

And Hannah spelled it right. 




THOMAS NELSON PAGE. 


AUTHOR OF “ IN OLE VIRGINIA.” 


N old adage declares it “an ill wind that blows nobody good;” and 
certainly the world may take whatever consolation it can find out of 
the fact that the long and bloody war between the North and South 
lias at least afforded the opportunity for certain literary men and 
women to rise upon the ruins which it wrought, and win fame to 
themselves as well as put money in their purses by embalming in 
literature the story of times and social conditions that now exist only in the history 
of the past. 

Thomas Nelson Page was born in Oakland, Hanover county, Virginia, on the 
twenty-third day of April, 1853, consequently, he was only eight years old when 
Fort Sumter was fired upon, and, during the imaginative period of the next few 
years, he lived in proximity to the battle fields of the most fiercely contested strug¬ 
gles of the war. His earliest recollections were of the happiest phases of life on 
the old slave plantations. That he thoroughly understands the bright side of such 
a life, as well as the Negro character and dialect, is abundantly established by the 
charming books which he has given to the world. 

His childhood was passed on the estate which was a part of the original grant of 
his maternal ancestor, General Thomas Nelson, a signer of the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence, for whom he was named. His early education was received in the neigh¬ 
borhood “subscription” schools (there were no free public schools in the South at 
that time), and at the hand of a gentle old aunt of whom Mr. Page tells in one of 
his stories. The war interfered with his regular studies but filled his mind with a 



knowledge schools cannot give, and, as stated above, it was out of this knowledge 
that his stories have grown. After the war, young Page entered the Washington 
and Lee University and later studied law, taking his degree in this branch from the 
University of Virginia, in 1874, and after graduating, practiced his profession in 
Richmond, Virginia, until 1884, when his first story of Virginia life “Marse Chan,” 
a tale of the Civil War, was printed in the “Century Magazine.” He had previously 
written dialectic poetry, but the above story was his first decided success, and at¬ 
tracted such wide attention that he forsook law for literature. In 1887, a volume of 
his stories was brought out under the title “In Ole Virginia,” which was followed in 
1888 by “Befo’ de War; Echoes in Negro Dialect,” which was written in co- 
laboration with Mr. A. C. Gordon. The next year a story for boys entitled, “Two 
Little Confederates,” appeared in the “St. Nicholas Magazine,” and was afterward 


198 




























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POPULAR AMERICAN NOVELISTS. 





















































































































THOMAS NELSON PAGE. 


199 


published in book form. A companion volume to this is “Among the Camps or 
i oung People s Stories of the War.” 1 

Mr. Page has been a frequent contributor to the current magazines for main- 
years, and has also lectured extensively throughout the country. In 1897 lie went 
abroad for a tour of England and the Continent of Europe. It is announced that 
on his return he will issue a new novel which we understand, he has been engaged 

upon tor some time and expects to make the most pretentious work of his life up to 
this date. 1 

•o* 


OLD SUE* 

(FROM “ PASTIME STORIES.”) 


Wm 011 the °ther side of Ninth Street, out- 
JQBN side my office window, was the stand 
of Old Sue, the “ tug-mule ” that pulled 
the green car around the curve from Main Street to 
Ninth and up the hill to Broad. Between her and 
the young bow-legged negro that hitched her on, 
drove her up, and brought her back down the hill for 
the next car, there always existed a peculiar friend¬ 
ship. He used to hold long conversations with her, 
generally upbraiding her in that complaining tone 
■with opprobrious terms which the negroes employ, 
which she used to take meekly. At times he petted 
her with his arm around her neck, or teased her, 
punching her in the ribs and walking about around her 
quarters, ostentatiously disregardful of her switching 
stump of a tail, backed ears, and uplifted foot, 
and threatening her with all sorts of direful punish¬ 
ment if she “ jis dyarred to tetch ” him. 

“ Kick me—heah, kick me ; I jis dyah you to lay 
you’ foot ’g’inst me,” he would say, standing defiantly 
against her as she appeared about to let fly at him. 
Then he would seize her with a guffaw. Or at 
times, coming down the hill, he would “ hall off” and 
hit her, and “ take out ” with her at his heels her 
long furry ears backed, and her mouth wide open as 
if she would tear him to pieces ; and just as she 
nearly caught him he would come to a stand and 
wheel around, and she would stop dead, and then 
walk on by him as sedately as if she were in a har¬ 
row. In all the years of their association she never 
failed him; and she never failed to fling herself on 
the collar, rounding the sharp curve at Ninth, and to 
get the car up the difficult turn. 

Last fall, however, the road passed into new hands, 


and the management changed the old mules on the 
line, and put on a lot of new and green horses. It 
happened to be a dreary, rainy day in November 
when the first new team was put in. They came 
along about three o’clock. Old Sue had been stand¬ 
ing out in the pouring rain all day with her head 
bowed, and her stubby tail tucked in, and her black 
back dripping. She had never failed nor faltered. 
The tug-boy in an old rubber suit and battered tar- 
pauling hat, had been out also, his coat shining with 
the wet. lie and old Sue appeared to mind it as¬ 
tonishingly little. The gutters were running brim¬ 
ming full, and the cobble-stones were wet and slippery. 
The street cars were crowded inside and out, the 
wretched people on the platforms vainly trying to 
shield themselves with umbrellas held sideways. It 
was late in the afternoon when I first observed that 
there was trouble at the corner. I thought at first 
that there was an accident, but soon found that it 
was due to a pair of new, balking horses in a car. 
Old Sue was hitched to the tug, and was doing her 
part faithfully ; finally she threw her weight on the 
collar, and by sheer strength bodily dragged the car, 
horses and all, around the curve and on up the straight 
track, until the horses, finding themselves moving, 
went off with a rush, I saw the tug-boy shake his 
head with pride, and heard him give a whoop of 
triumph. The next car went up all right; but the 
next had a new team, and the same thing occurred. 
The streets were like glass; the new horses got to 
slipping and balking, and old Sue had to drag them 
up as she did before. From this time it went from 
bad to worse: the rain changed to sleet, and the 
curve at Ninth became a stalling-place for every car. 


* Copyright, Harper & Bros. 










200 


THOMAS NELSON PAGE. 


Finally, just at dark, there was a block there, and 
the cars piled up. I intended to have taken a car 
on my way home, but finding it stalled, I stepped 
into my friend Polk Miller’s drug-store, just on the 
corner, to get a cigar and to keep warm. I could see 
through the blurred glass of the door the commotion 
going on just outside, and could hear the shouts of 
the driver and of the tug-boy mingled with the clatter 
of horses’ feet as they reared and jumped, and the 
cracks of the tug-boy’s whip as he called to Sue, 
“ Git up, Sue, git up, Sue.” Presently, I heard a 
shout, and then the tones changed, and things got 
quiet. 

A minute afterwards the door slowly opened, and 
the tug-boy came in limping, his old hat pushed back 
on his head, and one leg of his wet trousers rolled up 
to his knee, showing about four inches of black, 
ashy skin, which he leaned over and rubbed as he 
walked. His wet face wore a scowl, half pain, half 
anger. “Mist’ Miller, kin I use you’telephone ? ” 
he asked, surlily. (The company had the privilege 
of using it by courtesy.) 

“ Yes; there ’tis.” 

He limped up, and still rubbing his leg with one 
hand, took the ’phone off the hook with the other 
and put it to his ear. 

“ Hello, central—hello ! Please gimme fo’ hund’ 
an' sebenty-three on three sixt’-fo’—fo’ hund’ an’ 
sebent’-three on three sixt’-fo’. 


“ Hello ! Suh ? Yas, suh; fo’ hund’ an’ sebent’- 
three on three sixt’-fo’. Street-car stables on three 
sixt’-fo’. Hello! Hello! Hello! Hat you, street¬ 
car stables? Hello! Yas. Who dat? Oh! Hat 
you, Mist’ Mellerdin? Yas, suh; yes, suh; Jim; 
Jim; dis Jim. G-i-m, Jim. Yas, suh : wliar drive 
Ole Sue, in Mist’ Polk Miller’ drug-sto’—. Yas, 
suh. ‘ Matter ’ ?—Ole Sue—she done tu’n fool; 
done gone ’stracted. I can’t do nuttin’ ’tall wid her. 
She ain’ got no sense. She oon pull a poun’. Suh? 
Yas, suh. Nor, suh. Yas, suh. Nor, suh ; I done 
try ev’ything. I done beg her, done cuss her, done 
whup her mos’ to death. She ain’ got no reason- 
rnent. She oon do nuttin’. She done haul off, an’ 
leetle mo’ knock my brains out; she done kick me 
right ’pon meli laig—’pon my right laig.” (He 
stooped over and rubbed it again at the reflection.) 
“ Hone bark it all up. Suh? Yas, suh. Tell nine 
o’clock ? Yas, suh ; reckon so; ’ll try it leetle longer. 
Yas, suh ; yas, suh. Good-night—good-bye !” 

He hung the ’phone back on the hook, stooped and 
rolled down the leg of his breeches. “ Thankee, 
Mist’ Miller! Good-night.” 

He walked to the door, and opened it. As he 
passed slowly out, without turning his head, he said, 
as if to himself, but to be heard by us, “I wish I 
had a hundred an’ twenty-five dollars. I boun’ I’d 
buy dat durned ole mule, an’ cut her dog-goned 
th’oat.” 






EDWARD PAYSON ROE. 

AUTHOR, OF “ BARRIERS BURNED AWAY.” 


R. ROE is not considered as one of the strongest of American novel¬ 
ists ; but that he was one of the most popular among the masses of 
the j)eople, from 1875 to the time of his death, goes without saying. 
His novels were of a religious character, and while they were doubt¬ 
less lacking in the higher arts of the hedonist, he invariably told 
an interesting story and pointed a healthy moral. “Barriers Burned 
Away ” is, perhaps, his best novel, and it has been declared by certain critics to be 
at once one of the most vivid portrayals and correct pictures of the great Chicago 
fire that occurred in 1871 which lias up to this time been written . 

Edward Payson Roe was born at New Windsor, New York, in 1838, and died, 
when fifty years of age, at Cornwall, the same State, in 1888. He was being educated 
at Williams College, but had to leave before graduating owing to an affection of the 
eyes. In consequence of his literary work, however, the college in after years gave 
him the degree of A. B. In 1862, he volunteered his services in the army and 
served as chaplain throughout the Civil War. From 1865 to 1874 he was pastor 
of the Presbyterian Church at Highland Falls, New York. In 1874 he resigned 
his pastorate, and, to the time of his death, gave himself to literature and to the 
cultivation of a small fruit farm. 

Other works of this author, after “ Barriers Burned Away,” are “ Play and Profit 
in my Garden ” (1873); “ What Can She Do ? ” (1873); “ Opening a Chestnut Burr ” 
(1874); “From Jest to Earnest” (1875); “Near to Nature’s Heart” (1876); 
“A Knight of the Nineteenth Century” (1877); “A Face Illumined” (1878); 
“A Day of Fate” (1880); “Success with Small Fruits” (1880); “Without a 
Home” (1880); “His Sombre Rivals” (1883); “A Young Girl’s Wooing” (1884); 
“Nature’s Serial Story” (1884) ; “An Original Belle” (1885); “Driven Back to 
Eden ” (1885) ; “ He Fell in Love with His Wife ” (1886) ; “ The Earth 
Trembled” (1887) ; “Miss Lou” (1888); “The Home Acre” (1889) and “Taken 
Alive ” (1889), the two last mentioned being published after the death of the author. 

201 







































202 


EDWARD PAYSON ROE. 


CHRISTINE, AWAKE 
OR a block or more Dennis was passively 
borne along by the rushing mob. Sud- 
1 denly a voice seemed to shout almost in 
his ear, “ The north side is burning !” and he started 
as from a dream. The thought of Christine flashed 
upon him, perishing, perhaps, in the flames. He 
remembered that now she had no protector, and that 
he for the moment had forgotten her ; though in 
truth he had never imagined that she could be im¬ 
periled by the burning of the north side. 

In an agony of fear and anxiety he put forth 
every effort of which he was capable, and tore 
through the crowd as if mad. There was no way of 
getting across the river now save by the La Salle 
street tunnel. Into this dark passage he plunged with 
multitudes of others. It was indeed as near Pan¬ 
demonium as any earthly condition could be. Driven 
forward by the swiftly pursuing flames, hemmed in 
on every side, a shrieking, frenzied, terror-stricken 
throng rushed into the black cavern. Every moral 
grade was represented there. Those who led 
abandoned lives were plainly recognizable, their guilty 
consciences finding expression in their livid faces. 
These jostled the refined and delicate lady, who, in 
the awful democracy of the hour, brushed against 
thief and harlot. Little children wailed for their 
lost parents, and many were trampled underfoot. 
Parents cried for their children, women shrieked for 
their husbands, some praying, many cursing with 
oaths as hot as the flames that crackled near. 
Multitudes were in no other costumes than those in 
which they had sprung from their beds. Altogether it 
was a strange, incongruous, writhing mass of human¬ 
ity, such as the world had never looked upon, pouring 
into what might seem, in its horrors, the mouth of hell. 

As Dennis entered the utter darkness, a confused 
roar smote his ear that might have appalled the 
stoutest heart, but he was now oblivious to every¬ 
thing save Christine’s danger. With set teeth he 
put his shoulder against the living mass and pushed 
with the strongest till he emerged into the glare of 
the north side. Here, escaping somewhat from the 
throng, he made his way rapidly to the Ludolph 
mansion, which to his joy he found was still consid¬ 
erably to the windward of the fire. But he saw 


FOR YOUR LIFE!* 

that from the southwest another line of flame was 
bearing down upon it. 

The front door was locked, and the house utterlv 
dark. He rang the bell furiously, but there was no 
response. He walked around under the window and 
shouted, but the place remained as dark and silent as 
a tomb. He pounded on the door, but its massive 
thickness scarcely admitted of a reverberation. 

“ They must have escaped,” he said ; “ but merciful 
heaven ! there must be no uncertainty in this case. 
What shall I do ?” 

The windows of the lower story were all strongly 
guarded and hopeless, but one opening on the balcony 
of Christine’s studio seemed practicable, if it could 
be reached. A half-grown elm swayed its graceful 
branches over the balcony, and Dennis knew the 
tough and fibrous nature of this tree. In the New 
England woods of his early home he had learned to 
climb for nuts like a squirrel, and so with no great 
difficulty he mounted the trunk and dropped from an 
overhanging branch to the point he sought. The 
window was down at the top, but the lower sash was 
fastened. He could see the catch by the light of 
the fire. He broke the pane of glass nearest it, 
hoping that the crash might awaken Christine, if she 
were still there. But, after the clatter died away, 
there was no sound. He then noisily raised the sash 
and stepped in. . . . 

There was no time for sentiment. He called 
loudly: “ Miss Ludolph, awake ! awake! for your life! ” 

There was no answer. 11 She must be gone,” he 
said. The front room, facing toward the west, he 
knew to be her sleeping-apartment. Going through 
the passage, he knocked loudly, and called again ; 
but in the silence that followed he heard his own 
watch tick, and his heart beat. He pushed the door 
open with the feeling of one profaning a shrine, and 
looked timidly in. . . . 

She lay with her face toward him. Her hair of 
gold, unconfined, streamed over the pillow ; one fair, 
round arm, from which her night-robe had slipped 
back, was clasped around her head, and a flickering 
ray of light, finding access at the window, played 
upon her face and neck with the strangest and most 
weird effect. 



* Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co. 












EDWARD PAYSON ROE. 


203 


So deep was her slumber that she seemed dead, 
and Dennis, in his overwrought state, thought she 
was. lor a moment his heart stood still, and his 
tongue was paralyzed. A distant explosion aroused 
him. Approaching softly he said, in an awed whis¬ 
per (he seemed powerless to speak louder), “ Miss 
Ludolph !—Christine !” 

But the light of the coming fire played and 
flickered over the still, white face, that never before 
had seemed so strangely beautiful. 

“ Miss Ludolph !—0 Christine, awake !” cried 
Dennis, louder. 

To his wonder and unbounded perplexity, he saw 
the hitherto motionless lips wreathe themselves 
into a lovely smile, but otherwise there was no 
response. . . . 

A louder and nearer explosion, like a warning 
voice, made him wholly desperate, and he roughly 
seized her hand. 

Christine’s blue eyes opened wide with a bewildered 
stare; a look of the wildest terror came into them, 
and she started up and shrieked, “ Father ! father !” 

Then, turning toward the as yet unknown invader, 
she cried piteously : “ Oh, spare my life ! Take 
everything; I will give you anything you ask, only 
spare my life!” 

She evidently thought herself addressing a ruthless 
robber. 

Dennis retreated towards the door the moment she 
awakened; and this somewhat reassured her. 

In the firm, quiet tone that always calms excite¬ 
ment, he replied, “ I only ask you to give me your 
confidence, Miss Ludolph, and to join with me, 
Dennis Fleet, in my effort to save your life.” 

“ Dennis Fleet! Dennis Fleet! save my life ! 0 


ye gods, what does it all mean?” and she passed her 
hand in bewilderment across her brow, as if to brush 
away the wild fancies of a dream. 

“ Miss Ludolph, as you love your life, arouse your¬ 
self and escape ! The city is burning !” 

When Dennis returned, he found Christine panting 
helplessly on a chair. 

“ Oh, dress ! dress !” he cried. “ We have not a 
moment to spare.” 

The sparks and cinders were falling about the 
house, a perfect storm of fire. The roof was already 
blazing, and smoke was pouring down the stairs. 

At his suggestion she had at first laid out a heavy 
woolen dress and Scotch plaid shawl. She nervously 
sought to put on the dress, but her trembling fingers 
could not fasten it over her wildly throbbing bosom. 
Dennis saw that in the terrible emergency he must 
act the part of a brother or husband, and, springing 
forward, he assisted her with the dexterity he had 
learned in childhood. 

Just then a blazing piece of roof, borne on the 
wings of the gale, crashed through the window, and 
in a moment the apartment, that had seemed like a 
beautiful casket for a still more exquisite jewel, was 
in flames. 

Hastily wrapping Christine in the blanket shawl, 
he snatched her, crying and wringing her hands, into 
the street. 

Holding his hand she ran two or three blocks 
with all the speed her wild terror prompted ; then 
her strength began to fail, and she pantingly cried 
that she could run no longer. But this rapid rush 
carried them out of immediate peril, and brought 
them into the flying throng pressing their way north¬ 
ward and westward. 



FRANCIS MAEION CRAWFORD. 


(our most cosmopolitan novelist.) 



NDREW LANG lias pronounced Marion Crawford “ tlie most 
versatile of modem novelists.” It may also be truly said that 
lie is the most cosmopolitan of all our American authors. One feels 
after reading his stories of life and society in India, Italy, England 
and America that the author does not belong anywhere in particular, 
but is rather a citizen of the world in general. 

He drew from nearly every country of culture for his education, and the result is 
clearly apparent in his voluminous and varied works. He is one of the rare and 
favored few who have stumbled almost by accident upon fame and who have 
increased their early fame by later labors. 

Marion Crawford was born in Italy in 1854. His father was a native of Ireland, 
a sculptor of repute, and his mother was an American, a sister of Julia Ward Howe. 
His father died when he was three years old, and he was put with relatives on a farm 
in Bordentown, N. J., where he had a French governess. At a suitable age he was 
sent to St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, and later he studied with a country 
clergyman in England. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he showed 
an aptitude for mathematics. 

After studying in the Universities of Heidelberg, Carlesruhe and Rome, he went 
to India to make a thorough study of Sanscrit. Here his funds gave out and left 
him nearly stranded with no prospects of improvement. 

Just as he was on the point of joining the Anglo-Indian army, he was offered 
the position of editor on the “ Allahabad Herald,” in an unhealthy town a thousand 
miles from Bombay. The work was extremely difficult and absorbing for one who 
had never had previous connection with a newspaper, requiring sixteen hours of 
daily work in a climate of excessive heat. 

After resigning this position he returned to Italy and took passage on a “tramp” 
steamer for America. He was wrecked, after a six weeks’ voyage, and thrown on 
the coast of Bermuda, With these varied experiences he had stored up in a fertile 
memory material for his numerous novels. It was his first intention to continue his 
Sanscrit studies at Harvard, but a circumstance of the simplest nature revealed to 
him and to the world his remarkable powers as a story-teller. 

He has himself told how he came to write “ Mr. Isaacs,” his first novel. 

“ On May 5, 1882, Uncle Sam (Samuel Ward) asked me to dine with him at the 

204 

































FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 


205 


New York Club, which was then in the building on Madison Square now called the 
Madison Square bank building. We had dined rather early and were sitting in 
the smoking-room, while it was still light. As was natural we began to exchange 
stories while smoking, and I told him with a good deal of detail my recollections of 
an interesting man whom I had met in Sinila. When I finished he said to me, 
‘That is a good two-part magazine story, and you must write it out immediately.’ 
He took me round to his apartments, and that night I began to write the story of 
‘ Mr. Isaacs.’ I kept at it from day to day, getting more and more interested in 
the work as I proceeded. I was so amused with the writing of it that it occurred 
to me that I might as well make Mr. Isaacs fall in love with an English girl, and 
then I kept on writing to see what would happen. By and by I remembered a 
mysterious Buddhist whom I had once met, so I introduced him to still further 
complicate matters.” 

He was in Canada working on “Dr. Claudius” when “Mr. Isaacs” was issued by 
the publisher. When he reached Boston on his return he found the news-stands 
covered with posters announcing the famous story of “Mr. Isaacs,” and he himself 
was “interviewed,” and solicited by magazine publishers to give them a new story at 
once. “ Dr. Claudius,” was soon ready and though less romantic found a host of 
readers. His constructive powers increased as he devoted himself to his art and 
books came from his pen in rapid succession. In 1883 he went to Italy and in the 
following year he married the daughter of General Berdan and established himself 
in a lovely villa at Sorrento where he has since lived, writing either in his villa or 
on board his yacht. 

His third book, a tragic tale of Homan society, is called “To Leeward.” His 
most popular novels is the trilogy, describing the fortunes of a noble Italian family, 
woven in with the history of Modern Rome, from 1865 to 1887. They are in their 
order “Saracinesca,” “Sant’ Uario ” and “Don Orsino.” This historical trilogy 
depicts with much power the last struggle of the papacy for temporal power. 

In 1885 he issued “Zoroaster,” a story of ancient Persia, with King Darius and 
the prophet Daniel for characters. 

“Marzio’s Crucifix” (1887) was written in ten days. Marion Crawford had 
studied silver carving with a skilful workman and the idea suggested itself to him 
to write a story of an atheist who should put his life and soul into the carving of a 


crucifix. 

“The Lonely Parish ” was written in twenty-four days. The author had promised 
a novel at a certain date and the imperious publisher held him to his promise. He 
had studied with a clergyman in the little English village of Hatfield Regis, and 
to make his story he simply lifted that little village bodily out of his memory and 
put it into his novel, even to the extent of certain real names and localities. His 
other chief works are: “Witch of Prague” (1892), “Greifenstein,” “Paul 
Patoff” (1887), “ The Three Fates,” “Katherine Lauterdale,” “The Ralstones,” and 

“Pietro Ghisleri.” 


206 


FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 


HORACE BELLINGHAM* 


(FROM “ DR. CLAUDIUS.”) 


Y, but he was a sight to do good to the 
souls of the hungry and thirsty, and of 
the poor and in misery ! . . 

There are some people who turn gray, but who do 
not grow hoary, whose faces are furrowed but not 
wrinkled, whose hearts are sore wounded in many 
places, but are not dead. There is a youth that bids 
defiance to age, and there is a kindness which laughs 



at the world’s rough usage. These are they who 
have returned good for evil, not having learned it as 
a lesson of righteousness, but because they have no 
evil in them to return upon others. Whom the gods 
love die young because they never grow old. The 
poet, who, at the verge of death, said this, said it of 
and to this very man. 


IN THE HIMALAYAS* 

(FROM “ MR. ISAACS.”) 


E lower Himalayas are at first extremely 
disappointing. The scenery is enormous 
but not grand, and at first hardly seems 
large. The lower parts are at first sight a series of 
gently undulating hills and wooded dells; in some 
places it looks as if one might almost hunt the 
country. It is long before you realize that it is all 
on a gigantic scale; that the quick-set hedges are 
belts of rhododendrons of full growth, the water- 
jumps rivers, and the stone walls mountain-ridges ; 
that to hunt a country like that you would have to 
ride a horse at least two hundred feet high. You 
cannot see at first, or even for some time, that the 
gentle-looking hill is a mountain of five or six thou¬ 
sand feet above the level of the Rhigi Kulm in 
Switzerland. Persons who are familiar with the 
aspect of the Rocky Mountains are aware of the 
singular lack of dignity in those enormous elevations. 
They are merely big, without any superior beauty 
until you come to the favored spots of nature’s art, 
where some great contrast throws into appalling relief 
the gulf between the high and the low. It is so in 
the Himalayas. You may travel for hours and days 
amidst vast forests and hills without the slightest 
sensation of pleasure or sense of admiration for the 
scene, till suddenly your path leads you out on to 
the dizzy brink of an awful precipice—a sheer fall, 


so exaggerated in horror that your most stirring 
memories of Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, and the 
hideous arete of the Pitz Bernina, sink into vague 
insignificance. The gulf that divides you from the 
distant mountain seems like a huge bite taken bodily 
out of the world by some voracious god ; far away 
rise snow-peaks such as were not dreamt of in your 
Swiss tour; the bottomless valley at your feet is 
misty and gloomy with blackness, streaked with mist, 
while the peaks above shoot gladly to the sun and 
catch his broadside rays like majestic white standards. 
Between you, as you stand leaning cautiously against 
the hill behind you, and the wonderful background 
far away in front, floats a strange vision, scarcely 
moving, but yet not still. A great golden shield sails 
steadily in vast circles, sending back the sunlight in 
every tint of burnished glow. The golden eagle of 
the Himalayas hangs in mid-air, a sheet of polished 
metal to the eye, pausing sometimes in the full blaze 
of reflection, as ages ago the sun and the moon stood 
still in the valley of the Ajalon ; too magnificent for 
description, as he is too dazzling to look at. The 
whole scene, if no greater name can be given to it, 
is on a scale so Titanic in its massive length and 
breadth and depth, that you stand utterly trembling 
and weak and foolish as you look for the first time. 
You have never seen such masses of the world before. 



* Copyright, MacMillan & Co. 


















* 

* 


FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 



OPULAR among the writers of lighter fiction in modern times, who 
have delighted the multitudes from the realms of childhood to almost 
every walk of life, few authors have been more prolific and generally 
popular than the illustrator of “ Vanity Fair ” and the author of 
“The Lady or the Tiger/’ 

Frank Stockton (for with the masses he is plain “ Frank”) was 
born in Philadelphia, Pa., April 5, 1834. He had the benefit of only such educa¬ 
tional training as the public schools and the Central High School of that city 
afforded. Originally, his ambition was to be an engraver, and he devoted a number 
of years to that calling,—engraving and designing on wood for the comic paper 
published in New York City, before the war, under the title of “Vanity Fair.” 
He also made pictures for other illustrated periodicals; and at the same time he also 
did literary and journalistic work, his first connection being with the Philadelphia 
“ Post.” In 1872 he abandoned his engraving altogether to accept an editorial 
position on the New York “ Hearthstone,” and later he joined the staff of “ Scribner’s 
Monthly,” which has since been converted into the “ Century Magazine.” He was 
also made assistant editor of “ St. Nicholas Magazine,” when it was established in 
1873, in connection with Mary Mapes Dodge, the famous child writer. In 1880 
Mr. Stockton resigned his editorial position to devote himself to purely literary 
work. Since that time he has been before the world as a contributor to magazines 
on special topics and as a writer of books. 

Few authors have been more industrious than Frank Stockton. During the last 
thirty years his fertile imagination and busy pen have contributed at least one new 
book almost every year, frequently two volumes and sometimes three coming out in 
the course of twelve months. His first published volume was a collection of stories 
for children issued in 1869 under the title of “ Ting-a-Ling Stories.” Then came 
“ Round About Rambles “ What Might Have Been Expected “ Tales Out of 
School “A Jolly Fellowship;” “The Floating Prince;” “The Story of Viteau;” 
and “ Personally Conducted.” The above are all for young people and were issued 
between 1869 and 1889. Many now grown-up men and women look back with 
pleasant recollections to the happy hours spent with these books when they were 
boys and girls. 

Of the many other volumes of novels and short stories which Mr. Stockton has 
written, the following are, perhaps, the best known: “Rudder Grange” (1879); 
“Lady or the Tiger and Other Stories” (1884) ; “The Late Mrs. Mull” (1886) ; 

207 


































208 


FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 


“The Christmas Wreck and Other Tales ” (1887) ; “The Great War Syndicates ” 
(1889) ; “ Stories of Three Burglars ” (1890) ; “ The Merry Chanter ” (1890); and 
following this came “ Ardis Cloverden,” and since that several other serial novels 
have been published in the magazines. 

Mr. Stockton has also written some poetry ; but he is pre-eminently a story-teller, 
and it is to his prose writings that he is indebted for the popularity which he enjoys. 
His stories are direct and clear in method and style, while their humor is quiet, 
picturesque and quaint. 

-KX- 


THE END OF A CAREER * 
(from “the merry chanter.’') 


OR two years Doris and I had been en¬ 
gaged to be married. The first of these 
years appeared to us about as long as any 
ordinary year, but the second seemed to stretch itself 
out to the length of fifteen or even eighteen months. 
There had been many delays and disappointments in 
that year. 

We were both young enough to wait and both old 
enough to know we ought to wait; and so we waited. 
But, as we frequently admitted to ourselves, there 
was nothing particularly jolly in this condition of 
things. Every young man should have sufficient 
respect for himself to make him hesitate before en¬ 
tering into a matrimonial alliance in which he would 
have to be supported by his wife. This would have 
been the case had Dorris and I married within those 
two years. 

I am by profession an analyzer of lava. Having 
been from my boyhood an enthusiastic student of 
mineralogy and geology, I gradually became convinced 
that there was no reason why precious metals and 
precious stones should not be found at spots on the 
earth where nature herself attended to the working 
of her own mines. That is to say, that I can see 
no reason why a volcano should not exist at a spot 
where there were valuable mineral deposits; and 
this being the case, there is no reason why those de¬ 
posits should not be thrown out during eruptions in 
a melted form, or unmelted and mixed with the 
ordinary lava. 

Hoping to find proof of the correctness of my 
theory, I have analyzed lava from a great many vol¬ 
canoes. I have not been able to afford to travel 
much, but specimens have been sent to me from 


various parts of the world. My attention was par¬ 
ticularly turned to extinct volcanoes; for should I 
find traces of precious deposits in the lava of one of 
these, not only could its old lava beds be worked, but 
by artificial means eruptions of a minor order might 
be produced, and fresher and possibly richer material 
might be thrown out. 

But I had not yet received any specimen of lava 
which encouraged me to begin workings in the vicin¬ 
ity in which it was found. 

My theories met with little favor from other 
scientists, but this did not discourage me. Should 
success come it would be very great. 

Doris had expectations which she sometimes 
thought might reasonably be considered great ones, 
but her actual income was small. She had now no 
immediate family, and for some years lived with 
what she called “law kin.” She was of a most in¬ 
dependent turn of mind, and being of age could do 
what she pleased with her own whenever it should 
come to her. 

My own income was extremely limited, and what 
my actual necessities allowed me to spare from it 
was devoted to the collection of the specimens on the 
study of which I based the hopes of my fortunes. 

In regard to our future alliance, Doris depended 
mainly upon her expectations, and she did not hesi¬ 
tate, upon occasion, frankly and plainly to tell me 
so. Naturally I objected to such dependence, and 
anxiously looked forward to the day when a little 
lump of lava might open before me a golden future 
which I might honorably ask any woman to share. 
But I do not believe that anything I said upon this 
subject influenced the ideas of Doris. 



*The Century Co., New York. Copyright, Frank R. Stockton. 







FBANCIS BICHARD STOCKTON. 209 


The lady of my love was a handsome girl, quick 
and active of mind and body, nearly always of a 
lively mood, and sometimes decidedly gay. She had 
seen a good deal of the world and the people in it, 
and was “ up, as she put it, in a great many things. 
Moreover, she declared that she had “ a heart for any 
fate. It has sometimes occurred to me that this 
remark would better be deferred until the heart and 
the fate had had an opportunity of becoming ac¬ 
quainted with each other. 

M e lived not far apart in a New England town, 
and calling upon her one evening I was surprised to 
find the lively Doris in tears. Her tears were not 
violent, however, and she quickly dried them; and, 
without waiting for any inquiries on my part, she 
informed me of the cause of her trouble. 

“ The Merry Chanter has come in,” she said. 

“ Come in ! ” I ejaculated. 

u Tes, ’ she answered, “and that is not the worst 
of it; it has been in a long time. 

I knew all about the Merry Chanter. This was a 
ship. It was her ship which was to come in. Years 
ago this ship had been freighted with the ventures of 
her family, and had sailed for far-off seas. The 
results of those ventures, together with the ship 
itself, now belonged to Doris. They were her ex¬ 
pectations. 

“But why does this grieve you?” I asked. 
“ Why do you say that the coming of the ship, to 
which you have been looking forward with so much 
ardor, is not the worst of it? ” 

“ Because it isn’t,” she answered. “ The rest is 
a great deal worse. The whole affair is a doleful 
failure. I had a letter to-day from Mooseley, a little 
town on the sea-coast. The Merry Chanter came 
back there three years ago with nothing in it. What 
has become of what it carried out, or what it ought 
to have brought back, nobody seems to know. The 
captain and the crew left it the day after its arrival 
at Mooseley. Why they went away, or what they 
took with them. I have not heard, but a man named 
Asa Cantling writes me that the Merry Chanter has 
been lying at his wharf for three years; that he 
wants to be paid the wharfage that is due him ; and 
that for a long time he has been trying to find out to 
whom the ship belongs. At last he has discovered 
Mi at I am the sole owner, and he sends to me his bill 
l 4 


ioi wharfage, stating that he believes it now amounts 
to more than the vessel is worth.” 

“ Absurd ! I cried. “ Any vessel must be worth 
more than its wharfage rates for three years. This 
man must be imposing upon you.” 

Doris did not answer. She was looking drearily 
out of the window at the moonlighted landscape. 
Her heart and her fate had come together, and they 
did not appear to suit each other. 

I sat silent, also, reflecting. I looked at the bill 
which she had handed to me, and then I reflected 
again, gazing out of the window at the moonlighted 
landscape. 

It so happened that I then had on hand a sum of 
money equal to the amount of this bill, which amount 
was made up not only of wharfage rates, but of other 
expenses connected with the long stay of the vessel 
at Asa Cantling’s wharf. 

My little store of money was the result of months 
of savings and a good deal of personal self-denial. 
Every cent of it had its mission in one part of the 
world or another. It was intended solely to carry on 
the work of my life, my battle for fortune. It was to 
show me, in a wider and more thorough manner than 
had ever been possible before, what chance there was 
for my finding the key which should unlock for me 
the treasures in the storehouse of the earth. 

I thought for a few minutes longer, and then I said, 
“ Doris, if you should pay this bill and redeem the 
vessel, what good would you gain ? ” 

She turned quickly towards me. “ I should gain a 
great deal of good,” she said. “ In the first place I 
should be relieved of a soul-chilling debt. Isn’t that 
a good ? And of a debt, too, which grows heavier 
every day. Mr. Cantling writes that it will be diffi¬ 
cult to sell the ship, for it is not the sort that the 
people thereabout want. And if he breaks it up lie 
will not get half the amount of his bill. And so 
there it must stay, piling wharfage on wharfage, and 
all sorts of other expenses on those that have gone 
before, until I become the leading woman bankrupt 
of the world.” 

“ But if you paid the money and took the ship,” I 
asked, “ what would you do with it? ” 

“ I know exactly what I would do with it,” said 
Doris. “ It is my inheritance, and I would take that 
ship and make our fortunes. I would begin in a 





210 


FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 


humble way just as people begin in other busi¬ 
nesses. I would carry hay, codfish, ice, anything, 
from one port to another. And when I had made 
a little money in this way I would sail away to 
the Orient and come back loaded with rich stuffs and 
spices.” 

“ Did the people who sailed the ship before do 
that ? ” I asked. 

“ I have not the slightest doubt of it,” she answered; 
“ and they ran away with the proceeds. I do not 
know that you can feel as I do,” she continued. 
“ The Merry Chanter is mine. It is my all. For 
years I have looked forward to what it might bring 
me. It has brought me nothing but a debt, but I 
feel that it can be made to do better than that, and 
my soul is on fire to make it do better.” 

It is not difficult to agree with a girl who looks as 
this one looked and who speaks as this one spoke. 

“ Doris,” I exclaimed, “ if you go into that sort 


of thing I go with you. I will set the Merry Chanter 
free.” 

“ How can you do it? ” she cried. 

“ Doris,” I said, “ hear me. Let us be cool and 
practical.” 

11 1 think neither of us is very cool,” she said, 
“ and perhaps not very practical. But go on.” 

“ I can pay this bill,” I said, “ but in doing it I 
shall abandon all hope of continuing w 7 hat I have 
chosen as my life work ; the career which I have 
marked out for myself will be ended. Would you 
advise me to do this ? And if I did it would you 
marry me now with nothing to rely upon but our 
little incomes and what we could make from your 
ship? Now, do not be hasty. Think seriously, and 
tell me what you w T ould advise me to do.” 

She answered instantly, u Take me, and the Merry 
Chanter." 

I gave up my career. 


CL 




EDWARD BELLAMY. 

THE AUTHOR OF “ LOOKING BACKWARD.” 


HE most remarkable sensation created by any recent American author 
was perhaps awakened by Edward Bellamy’s famous book, “ Looking 
Backward,” of which over a half million copies have been sold in 
this country alone, and more than as many more on the other side 
of the Atlantic. This book was issued from the press in 1887, and 
maintained for several years an average sale of 100,000 copies 
per year in America alone. In 1897 a demand for sociological literature in Eng¬ 
land called for the printing of a quarter of a million copies in that country within 
the space of a few months, and the work has been translated into the languages of 
almost every civilized country on the earth. Its entire sale throughout the Avorld is 
probably beyond two million copies. 

Mr. Bellamy’s ideal as expressed in this book is pure communism, and the work is 
no doubt the outgrowth of the influence of Emersonian teaching, originally illus¬ 
trated in the Brook Farm experiment. As for Mr. Bellamy’s dream, it can never 
be realized until man’s heart is entirely reformed and the promised millennium 
shall dawn upon the earth; but that such an ideal state is pleasent to contemplate is 
evinced by the great popularity and enormous sale of his book. In order to give 
his theory a touch of human sympathy and to present the matter in a manner every 
way appropriate, Mr. Bellamy causes his hero to go to sleep, at the hands of a 
mesmerist, in an underground vault and to awake, undecayed, in the perfect vigor 
of vouth, one hundred years later, to find if not a new heaven, at least a new earth 
so far as its former social conditions were concerned. Selfishness was all gone 
from man, universal peace and happines reigned over the earth, and all things 
were owned in common. The story is well constructed and well written, and capti¬ 
vates the reader’s imagination. 

Edward Bellamy was born in Boston, Massachsetts, on March 26th, 1850. He 
attended Union College, but did not graduate. After studying in Germany he read 
law and was admitted to the bar in 1871 and has since practiced his profession, at 
the same time doing journalistic and literary work. For several years he was as¬ 
sistant editor of the “ Springfield (Mass.) Union” and an editorial writer for the 
New York “ Evening Post.” He has also contributed a number of articles to the 
magazines. His books are “Six to One, a Nantucket Idyl ” (1877) ; “ Dr. Heiden- 
hoff’s Process” (1879); “Miss Luddington’s Sister: a romance of Immortality” 
(1884); “Looking Backward” (1887); “Equality: a Komance of the future” 

211 



































212 


EDWARD BELLAMY. 


(1897). The last named is a continuation of the same theme as “ Looking Back¬ 
ward,” being more argumentative and entering into the recent conditions of society 
and new phases of politics and industrial questions. It is a larger book and a deeper 
study than its predecessor. The work was issued simultaneously in the United 
States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, and other 
countries. Owing to the recent interest in sociological literature it is believed by 
Mr. Bellamy and his publishers that this book will attain as wide a popularity as 
his other work on the subject. Mr. Bellamy’s writings have caused the founding 
of nationalist and communistic clubs throughout the United States, and his influence 
for the last few years has been powerfully felt in European countries. If this move¬ 
ment should continue to grow there is little doubt but Mr. Bellamy will be honored 
in the future for the impetus his books have given to communistic doctrines. 

The home of this author, near Boston, is said to be an ideal one, presided over by 
a most amiable wife, who is in hearty sympathy with her literary husband, both in 
his ideals and in his work. They have several bright children, and their home has 
been pointed out by reviewers as a remarkably happy one, constituting within it¬ 
self something of a miniature illustration of the ideal community which his theory 
portrays, if, indeed, it may not be said to heartily advocate. 


MUSIC IN THE YEAR 2000. 

(from “looking backward.) 

By Permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 


EN we arrived home, Hr. Leete had not 
yet returned, and Mrs. Leete was not 
visible. “ Are you fond of music, Mr. 
West?” Edith asked. 

I assured her that it was half of life, according to 
my notion. “ I ought to apologize for inquiring,” 
she said. “ It is not a question we ask one another 
nowadays; but I have read that in your day, even 
among the cultured class, there were some who did 
not care for music.” 

“ You must remember, in excuse,” I said, “ that 
we had some rather absurd kinds of music.” 

“ Yes,” she said, “ I know that; I am afraid I 
should not have fancied it all myself. Would you 
like to hear some of ours now, Mr. West?” 

“ Nothing would delight me so much as to listen 
to you,” I said. 

“ To me ! ” she exclaimed, laughing. “ Hid you 
think I was going to play or sing to you ? ” 

“ I hoped so, certainly,” I replied. 

Seeing that I was a little abashed, she subdued her 
merriment and explained. “ Of course, we all sing 
nowadays as a matter of course in the training of the 


voice, and some learn to play instruments for their 
private amusement; but the professional music is so 
much grander and more perfect than any performance 
of ours, and so easily commanded when we wish to 
hear it, that we don’t think of calling our singing or 
playing music at all. All the really fine singers and 
players are in the musical service, and the rest of us 
hold our peace for the main part. But would you 
really like to hear some music? ” 

I assured her once more that I would. 

“ Come, then, into the music-room,” she said, and 
I followed her into an apartment finished, without 
hangings, in wood, with a floor of polished wood. 
I was prepared for new devices in musical instru¬ 
ments. but I saw nothing in the room which by any 
stretch of imagination could be conceived as such. 
It was evident that my puzzled appearance was afford¬ 
ing intense amusement to Edith. 

“ Please look at to-day’s music,” she said, handing 
me a card, “ and tell me what you would prefer. It 
is now five o’clock, you will remember.” 

The card bore the date “ September 12, 2000,” 
and contained the longest programme of music I had 















EDWARD BELLAMY. 


213 


ever seen. It was as various as it was long, includ¬ 
ing a most extraordinary range of vocal and instru¬ 
mental solos, duets, quartettes, and various orches¬ 
tral combinations. I remained bewildered by the 
prodigious list until Edith’s pink finger-tip indicated 
a peculiar section of it, where several selections 
were bracketed, with the words “ 5 P. M.” against 
them; then I observed that this prodigious pro¬ 
gramme was an all-day one, divided into twenty-four 
sections answering to the hours. There were but a 
few pieces of music in the “5 P. M.” section, and I 
indicated an organ piece as my preference. 

“ I am so glad you like the organ,” said she. 

“ I think there is scarcely any music that suits my 
mood oftener.” 

She made me sit down comfortably, and, crossing 
the room, so far as I could see, merely touched one 
or two screws, and at once the room was filled with the 
music of a grand organ anthem; filled, not flooded, 
for, by some means, the volume of melody had been 
perfectly graduated to the size of the department. 
I listened, scarcely breathing, to the close. Such 
music, so perfectly rendered, I had never expected to 
hear. 

“ Grand !” I cried, as the last great wave of the 
sound broke and ebbed away into silence. “ Bach 
must be at the keys of that organ; but where is the 
organ?” 

“ Wait a moment, please,” said Edith ; “ I want 
to have you listen to. this waltz before you ask any 
questions. I think it is perfectly charming;” and as 


she spoke the sound of violins filled the room with 
the witchery of a summer night. When this also 
ceased, she said: “ There is nothing in the least 

mysterious about the music, as you seem to imagine. 
It is not made by fairies or genii, but by good, honest, 
and exceedingly clever good hands. We have simply 
carried the idea of labor-saving by co-operation into 
our musical service as into everything else. There 
are a number of music rooms in the city, perfectly 
adapted acoustically to the different sorts of music. 
These halls are connected by telephone with all the 
houses of the city whose people care to pay the small 
fee, and there are none, you may be sure, who do not. 
The corps of musicians attached to each hall is so 
large that, although no individual performer, or group 
of performers, has more than a brief part, each day’s 
programme lasts through the twenty-four hours. 
There are on that card for to-day, as you will see if 
you observe closely, distinct programmes of four of 
these concerts, each of a different order of music 
from the others, being now simultaneously performed, 
and any one of the four pieces now going on that you 
prefer, you can hear by merely pressing the button 
which will connect your house-wire with the hall 
where it is being rendered. The programmes are 
so co-ordinated that the pieces at any one time simul¬ 
taneously proceeding in the different halls usually 
offer a choice, not only between instrumental and 
vocal, and between different sorts of instruments; 
but also between different motives from grave to gay, 
so that all tastes and moods can be suited.” 






GEORGE W. CABLE. 

“the depictor of creole life in the south.” 

is said “Circumstances make the man and, again, “Seeming mis¬ 
fortunes are often blessings in disguise.” Whether this is generally 
true or not, at least in the case of George W. Cable, it has so turned 
out; for it was poverty and necessity that drove him through a 
vicissitude of circumstances which stored his mind with observations 
and facts that enabled him to open a new field of fiction, introducing 
to the outside world a phase of American life hitherto unsuspected save by those who 
have seen it. His rendering of the Creole dialect with its French and Spanish 
variations and mixtures is full of originality. He has depicted the social life of the 
Louisiana lowlands, with its Creole and negro population, so vividly that many 
whose portraits he has drawn have taken serious offence at his books. But it is no 
doubt the truth that hurts , and if so, it should he borne for the sake of history, and 
it is to the credit of Mr. Cable’s integrity as an author that he has not sacrificed the 
truth to please his friends. His books have also been the means of effecting whole¬ 
some changes in the contract system of convict labor in several Southern States. 

George W. Cable was born October 12,1844, in New Orleans, Louisiana. His 
father was a Virginian and his mother a New Englander. They removed to New 
Orleans in 1837. In 1859 Mr. Cable failed in business and died soon after, leaving 
the family in a straightened condition, and the son—then fifteen years of age— 
was compelled to leave school and take a clerkship in a store. This he retained 
until, at the age of nineteen, he volunteered in the service of the Confederate Army, 
joining the Fourth Mississippi Cavalry, and followed the fortunes of the Southern 
cause until it was lost. He was said to have been a gallant soldier, was once 
wounded and narrowly escaped with his life. All his spare moments in camp w r ere 
given to study. 

After the surrender of General Lee, Cable—a young man of twenty-one—returned 
to New Orleans, penniless, and took employment as an errand boy in a store. 
From there he drifted to Kosciusko, Mississippi, where he studied civil engineering, 
and joined a surveying party on bayous Teclie and Atchafalaya—the native heath 
of the Creole—and it was here that his keen observation gathered the material 
which has since done him so much service. 

Cable first began writing to the “ New Orleans Picayune ” under the nom-de- 
'plume of “ Drop Shot,” and his articles evinced a power which soon opened the 
way to a regular place on the editorial staff of the paper. This position he retained 

214 
























GEORGE W. CABLE. 


215 


until lie was asked to write a tlieatrical criticism. Cable bad rigid religious scruples 
—piety being one of his marked characteristics—always avoided attendance of the 
theatre, and he now refused to go, and resigned his position rather than violate his 


conscience. 

Leaving the editorial rooms of the “ Picayune,” Cable secured a position as 
accountant in a cotton-dealer’s office, which he retained until 1879, when the death 
of his employer threw him out of position. Meantime his sketches of Creole life 
had been appearing in “ Scribner’s Monthly,” and were received with so much 
favor that he determined to leave business and devote his life to literature. Accord - 
ingly, in 1885, he removed North, living at Simsbury, Connecticut, Northampton, 
Massachusetts, and New York, which he has since made his headquarters, with a 
continual growing popularity, his books bringing him an ample competency. 

Among the published works of this author we mention as the most prominent: 
“Old Creole Days ” (1879-1883); “ The Gran dissimes ” (1880); “Madame Del- 
phine ” (1881); “ Dr. Sevier ” (1883); “ The Creoles of Louisiana ” (1884); “The 
Silent South ” (1885) ; “ Bonaventure ” (1888) ; “ Strange True Stories of Louis¬ 
iana ” (1889); “The Negro Question ” and “Life of William Gilmore Sims” 
(1890) ; “John March Southerner,” and some later works which the author con¬ 
tinues to add at the rate of one book a year. 

Mr. Cable has also successfully entered the lecture field, in common with other 
modern authors, and never fails to interest Northern audiences with his readings 
or recitations, from his writings or the strange wild melodies and peculiar habits 
of life current among the French speaking negroes of the lower Mississippi. 

-K>«- 


THE DOCTOR* 


(FROM “ DR. SEVIER.”) 


HE main road to wealth in New Orleans has 
long been Carondelet Street. There you 
see the most alert faces; noses—it seems 
to one—with more and sharper edge, and eyes 
smaller and brighter and with less distance between 
them than one notices in other streets. It is there 
that the stock and bond brokers hurry to and fro and 
run together promiscuously—the cunning and the 
simple, the headlong and the wary—at the four clang¬ 
ing strokes of the Stock Exchange gong. There 
rises the tall facade of the Cotton Exchange. Look¬ 
ing in from the sidewalk as you pass, you see its 
main hall, thronged but decorous, the quiet engine- 
room of the surrounding city’s most far-reaching occu¬ 
pation, and at the hall’s farther end you descry the 
“ Future Room,” and hear the unearthly ramping and 
bellowing of the bulls and bears. Up and down the 
street, on either hand, are the ship-brokers and in¬ 



surers, and in the upper stories foreign consuls among 
a multitude of lawyers and notaries. 

In 1856 this street was just assuming its present 
character. The cotton merchants were making it 
their favorite place of commercial domicile. The 
open thoroughfare served in lieu of the present ex¬ 
changes ; men made fortunes standing on the curb¬ 
stone, and during bank hours the sidewalks were 
perpetually crowded with cotton factors, buyers, 
brokers, weighers, reweighers, classers, pickers, press- 
ers, and samplers, and the air was laden with cotton 
quotations and prognostications. 

Number 3^4, second floor, front, was the office of 
Dr. Sevier. This office was convenient to everything. 
Immediately under its windows lay the sidewalks 
where congregated the men who, of all in New Or¬ 
leans, could best afford to pay for being sick, and 
least desired to die. Canal Street, the city’s leading 


* Copyright, George W. Cable. 














216 


GEORGE W. CABLE. 


artery, was just below, at the near left-hand corner. 
Beyond it lay the older town, not yet impoverished 
in those days,—the French quarter. A single square 
and a half olf at the right, and in plain view from the 
front windows, shone the dazzling white walls of the 
St. Charles Hotel, where the nabobs of the river 
plantations came and dwelt with their fair-handed 
wives in seasons of peculiar anticipation, when it is 
well to be near the highest medical skill. In the 
opposite direction a three minutes’ quick drive around 
the upper corner and down Common Street carried the 
Doctor to his ward in the great Charity Hospital, and 
to the school of medicine, where he filled the chair 
set apart to the holy ailments of maternity. Thus, as 
it were, he laid his left hand on the rich and his right 
on the poor ; and he was not left-handed. 

Not that his usual attitude was one of benediction. 
He stood straight up in his austere pure-mindedness^ 
tall, slender, pale, sharp of voice, keen of glance, stern 
in judgment, aggressive in debate, and fixedly un¬ 
tender everywhere, except—but always except—in 
the sick chamber. His inner heart was all of flesh ; 
but his demands for the rectitude of mankind pointed 
out like the muzzles of cannon through the embra¬ 
sures of his virtues. To demolish evil!—that seemed 
the finest of aims ; and even as a physician, that was, 
most likely, his motive until later years and a better 
self-knowledge had taught him that to do good was 
still finer and better. He waged war—against 
malady. To fight; to stifle ; to cut down ; to uproot; 
to overwhelm,—these were his springs of action. 
That their results were good proved that his sentiment 
of benevolence was strong and high ; but it was well- 
nigh shut out of sight by that impatience of evil which 
is very fine and knightly in youngest manhood, but 
which we like to see give way to kindlier moods as 
the earlier heat of the blood begins to pass. 

He changed in later years; this was in 1856. To 
“ resist not evil ” seemed to him then only a rather 
feeble sort of knavery. To face it in its nakedness, 
and to inveigh against it in high places and low, 
seemed the consummation of all manliness; and man¬ 
liness was the key-note of his creed. There was no 
other necessity in this life. 

“ But a man must live,” said one of his kindred, to 
whom, truth to tell, he had refused assistance. 

“No, sir; that is just what he can’t do. A 


% 

man must die ! So, while he lives, let him be a 
man !” 

How inharmonious a setting, then, for Dr. Sevier, 
was 3 *4 Carondelet Street! As he drove each morn¬ 
ing, down to that point, he had to pass through long, 
irregular files of fellow-beings thronging either side¬ 
walk—a sadly unchivalric grouping of men whose 
daily and yearly life was subordinated only and en¬ 
tirely to the getting of wealth, and whose every eager 
motion was a repetition of the sinister old maxim that 
“ Time is money.” 

“ It’s a great deal more, sir, it’s life ! ” the Doctor 
always retorted. 

Among these groups, moreover, were many who 
were all too well famed for illegitimate fortune. Many 
occupations connected with the handling of cotton 
yielded big harvests in perquisites. At every jog of 
the Doctor’s horse, men came to view whose riches 
were the outcome of semi-respectable larceny. It 
was a day of reckless operation ; much of the com¬ 
merce that came to New Orleans was simply, as one 
might say, beached in Carondelet Street. The sight 
used to keep the long, thin, keen-eyed doctor in per¬ 
petual indignation. 

“ Look at the wreckers! ” he would say. 

It was breakfast at eight, indignation at nine, dys¬ 
pepsia at ten. 

So his setting was not merely inharmonious; it was 
damaging. He grew sore on the whole matter of 
money-getting. 

“ Yes, I have money. But I don't go after it. It 
comes to me, because I seek and render service for 
the service's sake. It will come to anybody else the 
same way ; and why should it come any other way?” 

He not only had a low regard for the motives of 
most seekers of wealth, he went further, and fell into 
much disbelief of poor men’s needs. For instance, he 
looked upon a man’s inability to find employment, or 
upon a poor fellow’s run of bad luck, as upon the 
placarded woes of a hurdy-gurdy beggar. 

“ If he wants work he will find it. As for begging, 
it ought to be easier for any true man to starve than 
to beg.” 

The sentiment was ungentle, but it came from the 
bottom of his belief concerning himself, and a longing 

O 7 O O 

for moral greatness in all men. 

O 

“ However,” he would add, thrusting his hand into 





GEORGE W. CABLE. 


217 


his pocket and bringing out his purse, “ I’ll help any 
man to make himself useful. And the sick—well^ 
the sick, as a matter of course. Only I must know 
what I’m doing.” 

Have some of us known want? To have known 
her—though to love her was impossible—is “ a liberal 
education.” The Doctor was learned; but this ac¬ 
quaintanceship, this education, he had never got. 
Hence his untenderness. Shall we condemn the 
fault? Yes. And the man? We have not the 
face. To be just, which he never knowingly failed to 
be, and at the same time to feel tenderly for the un¬ 
worthy, to deal kindly with the erring—it is a double 
grace that hangs not always in easy reach even of the 
tallest. The Doctor attained to it—but in later years; 
meantime, this story—which, I believe, had he ever 
been poor would never have been written. 

He had barely disposed of the three or four waiting 
messengers that arose from their chairs against the 
corridor wall, and was still reading the anxious lines 
left in various handwritings on his slate, when the 
young man entered. He was of fair height, slenderly 
built, with soft auburn hair, a little untrimmed, neat 
dress, and a diffident, yet expectant and courageous? 
face. 

“ Dr. Sevier ? ” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ Doctor, my wife is very ill; can I get you to come 
at once and see her? ” 

“ Who is her physician ? ” 

“ I have not called any; but we must have one 
now.” 

“ I don’t know about going at once. This is my 
hour for being in the office. How far is it, and what’s 
the trouble ? ” 

“We are only three squares away, just here in Cus¬ 
tom-house Street,” The speaker began to add a fal¬ 
tering enumeration of some very grave symptoms. 
The Doctor noticed that he was slightly deaf; he 
uttered his words as though he did not hear them. 

“ Yes,” interrupted Dr. Sevier, speaking half to 
himself as he turned around to a standing case of 


cruel-looking silver-plated things on shelves ; “ that’s 
a small part of the penalty women pay for the doubt¬ 
ful honor of being our mothers. I’ll go. What is 
your number ? But you had better drive back with 
me if you can.” He drew back from the glass case, 
shut the door, and took his hat. 

“ Narcisse ! ” 

On the side of the office nearest the corridor a door 
let into a hall-room that afforded merely good space 
for the furniture needed by a single accountant. The 
Doctor had other interests besides those of his profes¬ 
sion, and, taking them altogether, found it necessary, 
or at least convenient, to employ continuously the ser¬ 
vices of a person to keep his accounts and collect his 
bills. Through the open door the bookkeeper could 
be seen sitting on a high stool at a still higher desk— 
a young man of handsome profile and well-knit form. 
At the call of his name he unwound his legs from the 
rounds of the stool and leaped into the Doctor’s pres¬ 
ence with a superlatively highbred bow. 

u I shall be back in fifteen minutes,” said the Doc¬ 
tor. “ Come, Mr.-,” and went out with the 

stranger. 

Narcisse had intended to speak. He stood a mo¬ 
ment, then lifted the last half inch of a cigarette to 
his lips, took a long, meditative inhalation, turned 
half round on his heel, dashed the remnant with fierce 
emphasis into a spittoon, ejected two long streams of 
smoke from his nostrils, and, extending his fist to¬ 
ward the door by which the Doctor had gone out, 
said:— 

“ All right, ole hoss ! ” No, not that way. It is 
hard to give his pronunciation by letter. In the word 
“right” he substituted an a for the r, sounding it 
almost in the same instant with the i, yet distinct from 
it: “ All a-ight, ole hoss ! ” 

Then he walked slowly back to his desk, with that 
feeling of relief which some men find in the renewal 
of a promissory note, twined his legs again among 
those of the stool, and, adding not a word, resumed 
his pen. 






HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 

AUTHOR OF “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN. 

EW names are more indelibly written upon our country’s history than 
that of Harriet Beecher Stowe. “No book,” says George William 
Curtis, “was ever more a historical event than ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ 

. . . It was the great happiness of Mrs. Stowe not only to have 

written many delightful books, but to have written one book which 
will always be famous not only as the most vivid picture of an ex¬ 
tinct evil system, but as one of the most powerful influences in overthrowing 
it ... If all whom she has charmed and quickened should unite to sing her 
praises, the birds of summer would be outdone.” 

Harriet Beecher Stowe was the sixth child of Reverend Lyman Beecher,—the 
great head of that great family which has left so deep an impress upon the heart 
and mind of the American people. She was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 
June, 1811,—-just two years before her next younger brother, Henry Ward 
Beecher. Her father was pastor of the Congregational Church in Litchfield, and her 
girlhood was passed there and at Hartford, where she attended the excellent semi¬ 
nary kept by her elder sister, Catharine E. Beecher. In 1832 her father ac¬ 
cepted a call to the presidency of Lane Theological Seminary, at Cincinnati, and 
moved thither with his family. Catharine Beecher went also, and established there 
a new school, under the name of the Western Female Institute, in which Harriet 
assisted. 

In 1833 Mrs. Stowe first had the subject of slavery brought to her personal 
notice by taking a trip across the river from Cincinnati into Kentucky in company 
with Miss Dutton, one of the associate teachers in the Western Institute. They 
visited the estate that afterward figured as that of Mr. Shelby, in “Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin,” and here the young authoress first came into personal contact with the 
slaves of the South. 

Among the professors in Lane Seminary was Calvin E. Stowe, whose wife, a dear 
friend of Miss Beecher, died soon after Dr. Beecher’s removal to Cincinnati. In 
1836 Professor Stowe and Harriet Beecher were married. They were admirably 
suited to each other. Professor Stowe was a typical man of letters,—a learned, 
amiable, unpractical philosopher, whose philosophy was like that described by 
Shakespeare as “an excellent horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.” 
Her practical ability and cheerful, inspiring courage were the unfailing support 
of her husband. 




























OCTAVE THANET. 


AMELIA E. BARR. ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS (WARD). 



jANE GOODWIN AUSTIN. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. CHAS. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 



MARION HARLAND 


FRANCES HOGDSON BURNETT. 

NOTED WOMEN NOVELISTS 


HELEN HUNT JACKSON 







































, 























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' 








l •♦'V 

























HAIIRIET BEECHER STOWE 


219 


I lie years from 1845 to 1850 were a time of severe trial to Mrs. Stowe. She and 
her husband both suffered from ill health, and the family was separated. Professor 
Stowe was struggling with poverty, and endeavoring at the same time to lift the 
theological Seminary out of financial difficulties. In 1849, while Professor Stowe 
was ill at a water-cure establishment in Vermont, their youngest child died of cholera, 



UNCLE TOM AND IIIS BABY. 


“ ‘ Ain’t she a peart young ’nn ? ’ ” 


which was then raging in Cincinnati. In 1850 it was decided to remove to Bruns- 

O O 

wick, Maine, the seat of Bowdoin College, where Professor Stowe was offered a 
position. 

The year 1850 is memorable in the history of the conflict with slavery. It was 
the year of Clay’s compromise measures, as they were called, which sought to satisfy 
the North by the admission of California as a free State, and to propitiate the South 
by the notorious “Fugitive Slave Law.” The slave power was at its height, and 





220 


HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 


seemed to liold all things under its feet; yet in truth it had entered upon the last 
stage of its existence, and the forces were fast gathering for its final overthrow. 
Professor Cairnes and others said truly, “The Fugitive Slave Law has been to 
the slave power a questionable gain. Among its first fruits was “Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin.” 

The story was begun as a serial in the National Era , June 5, 1851, and was 
announced to run for about three months, but it was not completed in that paper 
until April 1, 1852. It had been contemplated as a mere magazine tale of perhaps 
a dozen chapters, but once begun it could no more be controlled than the waters of the 
swollen Mississippi, bursting through a crevasse in its levees. The intense interest 
excited by the story, the demands made upon the author for more facts, the un¬ 
measured words of encouragement to keep on in her good work that poured in from 
all sides, and, above all, the ever-growing conviction that she had been intrusted 
with a great and holy mission, compelled her to keep on until the humble tale had 
assumed the proportions of a large volume. Mrs. Stowe repeatedly said, “I could 
not control the story, it wrote itself;” and, “I the author of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’? 
No, indeed. The Lord himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest of instruments 
in his hand. To him alone should be given all the praise.” 

For the story as a serial the author received $300. In the meantime, however, 
it had attracted the attention of Mr. John P. Jewett, a Boston publisher, who 
promptly made overtures for its publication in book form. He offered Mr. and 
Mrs. Stowe a half share in the profits, provided they would share with him the 
expense of publication. This was refused by the Professor, who said he was alto¬ 
gether too poor to assume any such risk; and the agreement finally made was that 
the author should receive a ten per cent, royalty upon all sales. 

In the meantime the fears of the author as to whether or not her book would be 
read were quickly dispelled. Three thousand copies were sold the very first day, 
a second edition was issued the following week, a third a few days later; and within 
a year one hundred and twenty editions, or over three hundred thousand copies, of 
the book had been issued and sold in this country. Almost in a day the poor pro¬ 
fessor’s wife had become the most talked-of woman in the world; her influence for 
good was spreading to its remotest corners, and henceforth she was to be a public 
character, whose every movement would be watched with interest, and whose every 
word would be quoted. The long, weary struggle with poverty was to be hers no 
longer; for, in seeking to aid the oppressed, she had also so aided herself, that 
within four months from the time her book was published it had yielded her $10,- 
000 in royalties. 

In 1852 Professor Stowe received a call to the professorship of Sacred Literature 
in Andover Theological Seminary, and the family soon removed to their Massa¬ 
chusetts home. They were now relieved from financial pressure; but Mrs. Stowe’s 
health was still delicate; and in 1853 she went with her husband and brother to 
England, where she received, much to her surprise, a universal welcome. She 
made many friends among the most distinguished people in Great Britain, and on 
the continent as well. On her return she wrote the “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” 
and began “Dred, a Tale of the Dismal Swamp.” In fact, her literary career was 
just beginning. With “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” her powers seemed only to be fairly 


HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 


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awakened. One work after another came in quick succession. For nearly thirty 
years after the publication of “Uncle Tom,” her pen was never idle. In 1854 she 
published “Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands,” and then, in rapid succession, 
“The Minister’s Wooing,” “The Pearl of Orr’s Island,” “Agnes of Sorrento,” 
“House and Home Papers,” “Little Foxes,” and “Oldtown Folks.” These, how¬ 
ever, are but a small part of her works. Besides more than thirty books, she has 
written magazine articles, short stories, and sketches almost without number. She 

has entertained, in¬ 
structed, and inspired 
a generation born long 
after the last slave was 
made free,and to whom 
the great question 
which once convulsed 
our country is only a 
name. But her first 
great work has never 
been surpassed, and it 
will never be forgotten. 

After the war which 
accomplished the abo¬ 
lition of slavery, Mrs. 
Stowe lived in Hart¬ 
ford, Connecticut, in 
summer, and spent the 
winters in Florida, 
where she bought a 
luxurious home. Her 
pen was hardly ever 
idle; and the popular¬ 
ity of her works seemed 
to steadily increase. 
She passed away on 
the 1st of July, 1896, 
a scene in uncle tom’s cabin. amid the surroundings 

Little Eva .— “ ‘Oh, Uncle Tom ! what funny tilings you are making there.’ ” of her quiet, pretty 

home at Hartford, 

Connecticut. The whole reading world was moved at the news of her death, and 
many a chord vibrated at the remembrance of her powerful, and we may even say 
successful, advocacy of the cause of the slave. The good which “Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin” achieved can never be estimated, and the noble efforts of its author have 
been interwoven in the work of the world. 












HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 


‘U>9 

— — 


THE LITTLE EVANGELIST. 


FROM “UNCLE TOMS CABIN. 



T was Sunday afternoon. St. Clare was 
stretched on a bamboo lounge in the 
verandah, solacing himself with a cigar. 
Marie lay reclined on a sofa, opposite the window 
opening on the verandah, closely secluded under an 
awning of transparent gauze from the outrages of 
the mosquitoes, and languidly holding in her hand 
an elegantly-bound prayer-book. She was holding 
it because it was Sunday, and she imagined she 
had been reading it—though, in fact, she had been 
only taking a succession of short naps with it open 
in her hand. 

Miss Ophelia, who, after some rumaging, had 
hunted up a small Methodist meeting within riding 
distance, had gone out, with Tom as driver, to at¬ 
tend it, and Eva accompanied them. 

“ I say, Augustine,” said Marie, after dozing 
awhile, “ I must send to the city after my old 
doctor, Posey; I'm sure I’ve got the complaint of « 
the heart.” 

“Well; why need you send for him? This, 
doctor that attends Eva seems skillful.” 

“ I would not trust him in a critical case,” said 
Marie; “ and I think I may say mine is becoming 
so! I’ve been thinking of it these two or three 
nights past; I have such distressing pains and such 
strange feelings.” 

“ Oh, Marie, you are blue! I don’t believe it’s 
heart-complaint.” 

“ I daresay you don’t,” said Marie ; I was pre¬ 
pared to expect that. . You can be alarmed enough 
if Eva coughs, or has the least thing the matter with 
her ; but you never think of me.” 

“ If it’s particularly agreeable to you to have 
heart-disease, why, I’ll try and maintain you have it,” 
said St. Clare; “ I didn’t know it was.” 

“ Well, I only hope you won’t be sorry for this 
when it’s too late !” said Marie. “ But, believe it or 
not, my distress about Eva, and the exertions I have 
made with that dear child, have developed what I 
have long suspected.” 

What the exertions were which Marie referred to 
it would have been difficult to state. St. Clare 
quietly made this commentary to himself, and went 


on smoking, like a hard-hearted wretch of a man as 
he was, till a carriage drove up before the verandah, 
and Eva and Miss Ophelia alighted. 

Miss Ophelia marched straight to her own chamber, 
to put away her bonnet and shawl, as was always her 
manner, before she spoke a word on any subject ; 
while Eva came at St. Clare’s call, and was sitting on 
his knee, giving him an account of the services they 
had heard. 

They soon heard loud exclamations from Miss 
Ophelia’s room (which, like the one in which they 
were sitting, opened to the verandah), and violent re¬ 
proof addressed to somebody. 

“ What new witchcraft has Tops been brewing?” 
asked St. Clare. “ That commotion is of her raising, 
I'll be bound ! ” 

And in a moment after, Miss Ophelia, in high in¬ 
dignation, came dragging the culprit along. 

“ Come out here, now ! ” she said. “ I will tell your 
master ! ” 

“ What’s the case now ? ” asked Augustine. 

“ The case is, that I cannot be plagued with this 
child any longer! It’s past all bearing; flesh and 
blood cannot endure it! Here, I locked her up, and 
gave her a hymn to study and what does she do but 
spy out where I put my key, and has gone to my 
bureau and got a bonnet-trimming and cut it all to 
pieces to make dolls’ jackets! I never saw anything 
like it in my life.” 

“ I told you, cousin,” said Marie, “ that you’d find 
out that these creatures can’t be brought up without 
severity. If I had my way, now,” she said, looking 
reproachfully at St. Clare, “ I’d send that child out 
and have her thoroughly whipped ; I’d have her 
whipped till she couldn’t stand ! ” 

“ I don’t doubt it,” said St. Clare. “ Tell me of 
the lovely rule of woman ! I never saw above a dozen 
women that wouldn’t half kill a horse, or a servant 
either, if they had their own way with them—let 
alone a man.” 

“ There is no use in this shilly-shally way of yours, 
St. Clare ! ” said Marie. “ Cousin is a woman of 
sense, and she sees it now as plain as I do.” 

Miss Ophelia had just the capability of indigna- 













HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 


90 o 

*-d — * ) 


tion that belongs to the thorough-paced housekeeper, 
and this had been pretty actively roused by the 
artifice and wastefulness of the child ; in fact, many 
of my lady readers must own that they would have 
felt just so in her circumstances ; but Marie’s words 
went beyond her, and she felt less heat. 


“ I wouldn’t have the child treated so for the 
world,” she said ; “ but 1 am sure, Augustine, I don’t 
know what to do. I’ve taught and taught, I’ve 
talked till I’m tired, I’ve whipped her, I’ve punished 
her in every way I can think of; and still she’s just 
what she was at first.” 



MISS OPHELIA AND TOPSY. 

“I cannot be plagued with this child any longer ! ” 


“ Come here, Tops, you monkey ! ” said St. Clare, and blinking with a mixture of apprehensiveness and 
calling the child up to him. their usual odd drollery. 

Topsy came up ; her round, hard eyes glittering j “ What makes you behave so ? ” said Ct. CIa~ 


« 






















224 


HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 


who could not help being amused with the child’s ex¬ 
pression. 

“ ’Spects it’s my wicked heart,’’ said Topsy, de¬ 
murely ; “ Miss Feely says so.” 

“ Don’t you see how much Miss Ophelia has done 
for you ? She says, she has done everything she can 
think of.” 

“ Lor, yes, mas’r! old missis used to say so, too. 
She whipped me a heap harder, and used to pull my 
; ha’r, and knock my head agin the door; but it 
didn’t do me no good ! I spects if they’sto pull every 
spear o’ ha’r out o’ my head it wouldn’t do no good 
neither—I s so wicked ! Laws! I’s nothin’ but a 
nigger, no ways ! ” 

“ Well, I shall have to give her up,” said Miss 
Ophelia ; “ I can’t have that trouble any longer.” 

“ Well, I’d just like to ask one question,” said St. 
Clare. 

“ What is it ? ” 

“ Why, if your Gospel is not strong enough to 
save one heathen child, that you can have at home 
here, all to yourself, what’s the use of sending one 
or two poor missionaries off with it among thousands 
of just such ? I suppose this child is about a fair 
sample of what thousands of your heathen are.” 

Miss Ophelia did not make an immediate answer; 
and Eva, who had stood a silent spectator of the 
scene thus far, made a silent sign to Topsy to follow 
her. There was a little glass-room at the corner of the 
verandah, which St. Clare used as a sort of reading- 
room ; and Eva and Topsy disappeared into this place. 

“What’s Eva going about now?” said St. Clare ; 
“ I mean to see.” 

And, advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain 
that covered the glass-door, and looked in, In a 
moment, laying his finger on his lips, he made a silent 
gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look. There sat 
the two children on the floor, with their side faces 
towards them—Topsy with her usual air of careless 
drollery and unconcern ; but, opposite to her. Eva, 
her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears in her 
large eyes. 

“ What does make you so bad, Topsy ? Why won’t 
you try and be good? Don’t you love anybody , 
Topsy ? ” 

“ Dun no nothin' ’bout love ; I loves candy and 
sieh, that’s all,” said Topsy. 


“ But you love your father and mother ?” 

“ Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss 
Eva.” 

“ Oh, I know,” said Eva, sadly ; “ but hadn’t you 
any brother, or sister, or aunt, or-” 

“ No, none on ’em—never had nothing nor no¬ 
body.” 

“ But, Topsy, if you’d only try to be good, you 
might-” 

“ Couldn’t never be nothin’ but a nigger, if I was 
ever so good,” said Topsy. “ If I could be skinned, 
and come white, I’d try then.” 

“ But people can love you, if you are black, 
Topsy. Miss Ophelia would love you if you were 
good.” 

Topsy gave the short, blunt laugh that was her 
common mode of expressing incredulity. 

“ Don’t you think so? ” said Eva. 

“ No ; she can’t b’ar me, ’cause I’m a nigger !— 
she’d’s soon have a toad touch her. There can’t 
nobody love niggers, and niggers can’t do nothin’. I 
don’t care,” said Topsy, beginning to whistle. 

“ Oh, Topsy, poor child, I love you ! ” said Eva, 
with a sudden burst of feeling, and laying her little 
thin, white hand on Topsy’s shoulder. “ I love you 
because you haven’t had any father, or mother, or 
friends—because you’ve been a poor, abused child! 
I love you, and I want you to be good. I am very 
unwell, Topsy, and I think I slia’n’t live a great while ; 
and it really grieves me to have you be so naughty. 
I wish you would try to be good for my sake; it’s 
only a little while I shall be with you.” 

The round, keen eyes of the black child were 
overcast with tears ; large, bright drops rolled heavily 
down, one by one, and fell on the little white hand. 
Yes, in that moment a ray of real belief, a ray of 
heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her 
heathen soul! She laid her head down between her 
knees, and wept and sobbed; while the beautiful 
child, bending over her. looked like the picture of 
some bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner. 

“ Poor Topsy ! ” said Eva, “ don’t you know that 
Jesus loves all alike ? He is just as willing to love 
you as me. He loves you just as I do, only more, 
because He is better. He will help you to be good, 
and you can go to heaven at last, and be an angel 
for ever, just as much as if you were white. Only 









HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 


225 


think of it, Topsy, you can be one of those ‘ spirits 
bright’ Uncle Tom sings about.” 

“ Oh, dear Miss Eva ! dear Miss Eva ! ” said the 
child, “ I will try ! I will try! I never did care 
nothin’ about it before.” 

St. Clare at this moment dropped the curtain. “ It 
puts me in mind of mother,” he said to Miss 
Ophelia. “ It is true what she told me : if we want 
to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do 
as Christ did—call them to us and put our hands on 
them." 

“ I’ve always had a prejudice against negroes,” 
said Miss Ophelia; and it’s a fact, I never could bear 
to have that child touch me; but I didn’t think she 
knew it.” 

“ Trust any child to find that out,” said St. Clare : 

-•<>♦■ 


“ there’s no keeping it from them. But I believe 
that all the trying in the world to benefit a child, and 
all the substantial favors you can do them, will never 
excite one emotion of gratitude while that feeling 
of repugnance remains in the heart; it’s a queer 
kind of fact, but so it is.” 

“ I don’t know how I can help it,” said Miss 
Ophelia ; “ they are disagreeable to me—this child 
in particular. How can I help feeling so ? ” 

“ Eva does, it seems.” 

“ Well, she’s so loving ! After all, though, she’s no 
more than Christ-like,” said Miss Ophelia: “I wish 
I were like her. She might teach me a lesson.” 

“ It wouldn’t be the first time a little child had 
been used to instruct an old disciple, if it were so,” 
said St. Clare. 


THE OTHER WORLD. 

So thin, so soft, so sweet they glide, 
So near to press they seem, 

They lull us gently to OHr rest, 

They melt into our dream. 

And, in the hush of rest they bring, 
’Tis easy now to see, 

How lovely and how sweet to pass 
The hour of death may be ;— 


Its gentle breezes fan our cheek, 

Amid our worldly cares ; 

Its gentle voices whisper love, 

And mingle with our prayers. 

Sweet hearts around us throb and beat, 
Sweet helping hands are stirred ; 

And palpitates the veil between, 

With breathings almost heard. 

The silence, awful, sweet, and calm, 
They have no power to break ; 

For mortal words are not for them 
To utter or partake. 


To close the eye and close the ear, 
Wrapped in a trance of bliss, 
And, gently drawn in loving arms, 

To swoon from that to this:— 

Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep, 
Scarce asking where we are, 

To feel all evil sink away, 

All sorrow and all care! 



T lies around us like a cloud, 

The world we do not see; 

Yet the sweet closing of an eye 
May bring us there to be. 
















MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 


(MARION HARLAND.) 


Popular Novelist and Domestic Economist . 


ARION HARLAND combines a wide variety of talent. She is 
probably the first writer to excel in the line of fiction and also to be 
a leader in the direction of domestic economy. She is one of the 
most welcomed contributors to the periodicals, and her books on 
practical housekeeping, common sense in the household, and several 
practical cookery books have smoothed the way for many a young 
housekeeper and probably promoted the cause of peace in numerous households. 

Mary Virginia Hawes was the daughter of a native of Massachusetts who was 
engaged in business in Richmond, Virginia. She was born in 1831, and received a 
good education. She began in early childhood to display her literary powers. She 
wrote for the magazines in her sixteenth year and her first contribution, “ Marrying 
Through Prudential Motives,” was so widely read that it was published in nearly 
every journal in England, was translated and published throughout France, found 
its way back to England through a retranslation, and finally appeared in a new 
form in the United States. 

In 1856 she became the wife of Rev. Edward P. Terhune, afterwards pastor of 
the Puritan Congregational Church in Brooklyn, where in recent years they have 
lived. Mrs. Terhune has always been active in charitable and church work, and 
has done an amount of writing equal to that of the most prolific authors. She lias 
been editor or conducted departments of two or three different magazines and estab¬ 
lished and successfully edited the “ Home Maker.” Some of her most noted stories 
are “ The Hidden Path ; ” “ True as Steel; ” “ Husbands and Homes ; ” “ Phemie’s 
Temptation ; ” “ Ruby’s Husband; ” “ Handicap ; ” “ Judith ; ” “ A Gallant Fight; ” 
and “ His Great Self.” Besides these books and a number of others, she has written 
almost countless essays on household and other topics. Her book, “ Eve’s Daughters,” 
is a standard work of counsel to girls and young women. She takes an active part 
in the literary and philanthropic organizations of New York City, and has been pro¬ 
minent in the Woman’s Councils held under the auspices of a Chautauquan associa¬ 
tion. She was the first to call attention to the dilapidated condition of the grave of 
Mary Washington and started a movement to put the monument in proper condition. 
For the benefit of this movement, she wrote and published “ The Story of Mary 



226 

























MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE. 


227 


A MANLY HERO* 



(FROM “ A GALLANT FIGHT.”) 

FTER donning velvet jacket and slippers | had first robbed him, then let him play the sad-visaged 

dupe and fool, while the heyday of youth slipped 
forever beyond his reach ? 

To learn that—to remember the name with execra- 


he sat down, and, lighting his cigar, leaned 
back to watch the fire and dream of 


Salome and their real home. 


Not until the weed was half consumed did he ob¬ 
serve an envelope on the table at his elbow. It was 
sealed and addressed to him in a “ back-hand” he did 
not recognize: 

“ In the Library. Nine O'clock , P. M. 

“ My Own Love —You say in your letter (burned 
as soon as I had committed the contents to memory) 
that I must never call you that again. There is a 
higher law than that of man’s appointment, binding 
our hearts together, stronger even than that of your 
sweet, wise lips. Until you are actually married to 
the man whom you confess you do not love, you will, 
according to that divine law, be my own Marion— ” 


tion—to despise with the full force of a wronged and 
honest soul—perhaps to brand him as a cur and 
blackguard, should he ever cross his path—would not 
break his word. Was it not his right—the poor rag 
of compensation he might claim for the incalculable, 
the damnable evil the traitor had wrought ? He would 
confess to Salome’s mother to-morrow—but this one 
thing he would do. 

He stooped for the letter. 

“ Peace ! let him rest! God knoweth best! 

And the flowing tide comes in! 

And the flowing tide comes in ! ” 


With a violent start, the young man shook the 
sheet from his fingers as he would a serpent. 

This was what he had promised not to read, or so 
much as to touch ! The veins stood out high and 
dark on his forehead ; he drew in the air hissingly. 
Had a basilisk uncoiled from his bosom and thrust a 
forked tongue in his face the shock would not have 
been greater. This was “ the letter written to 
Marion ! ” He had thrown away six of the best 
years of his life upon the woman whom another man 
called his “ own love;” the man to whom she had 
confessed that she did not love her betrothed husband ! 
Who was he ? 

“ If they are genuine, respect for the dead and 
mercy to the living require that they should be sup¬ 
pressed and destroyed,” Mrs. Phelps had said of 
“ papers written a little while before Marion’s death.” 
His word was pledged. But what name would he 
see if he reversed the sheet before destroying it? 
With a bound of the heart that would have assured 
him, had proof been needed, what his bonnie living 
girl-love was to him, he put away all tender memories 
of the dead, false betrothed. He had worshipped 
and mourned the thinnest of shadows. He might 
owe respect—abstractly—to the dead, but no rever¬ 
ence to a wild dream from which he had been 
awakened. Who was the “ living ” to whom he was 
entreated to show mercy ? Where was the man who 


It was only his beloved stepmother on her nightly 
round of nursery and Gerald’s chamber, singing to 
her guileless self in passing her stepson’s door to 
prove her serenity of spirit; but Rex staggered back 
into his seat, put his elbows on his knees and covered 
his face with his hands. 

He smelled the balsam-boughs slanting to the 
water, the trailing arbutus Salome wore in her belt; 
heard the waves lapping the prow and sides of the 
bounding boat. God’s glorious heaven was over 
them, and the sun was rising, after a long, long night, 
in his heart. The fresh, tender young voice told the 
tale of love and loss and patient submission. 

Aye, and could not he, affluent in heaven’s best 
blessings, loving and beloved by the noble, true 
daughter of the Christian heroine who expected her 
u son ” to stand fast by his plighted word—the almost 
husband of a pure, high-souled woman—afford to 
spare the miserable wretch whose own mind and 
memory must be a continual hell ? 

He pitied, he almost forgave him, as he took up 
the sheets from the floor, the scrap of paper from 
the table, and, averting his eyes lest the signature 
might leap out at him from the twisting flame, laid 
them under the forestick and did not look that way 
again until nothing was left of them but cinder and 
ashes. 


* Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co. 











MARY ABIGAIL DODGE. 


THE FAMOUS ESSAYIST, CRITIC, AND NOVELIST, “GAIL HAMILTON.” 

]MONG the female writers of America, perhaps there is no one who 
has covered a more diversified field and done her work more thor¬ 
oughly, in the several capacities of essayist, philosopher, political 
writer, child-writer and novelist, than has Miss Mary Abigail Dodge, 
widely known by her pen-name, “Gail Hamilton.” Miss Dodge 
commanded a terse, vigorous and direct style; and with a courage 
manifested by few contemjioraneous authors, she cut right through shams and 
deceits with an easy and convincing blow that left no room for doubt. 

Mary Abigail Dodge was born in Hamilton, Massachusetts, in the year 1830. 
Her pen-name is composed of the last syllable of the word “Abigail’’and her 
native city, “Hamilton.” Her education was thorough, and in 1857 she was 
made instructor of physical science in the High School of Hartford, Connecticut. 
Some years after she became a governess in the family of Doctor Bailey the editor 
of the “National Era,” in Washington, D. C., and begun her career as a writer by 
contributing to his journal. For two years, from 1865 to 1867, she was one of the 
editors of “Our Young Folks,” and from that time to the close of her life she was 
a constant contributor to prominent magazines and newspapers—the name “ Gail 
Hamilton ” attached to an essay was always a guarantee that it was full of wit and 
aggressiveness. 

The published volumes of this author in order of their publication are as follows : 
“ Country Living and Country Thinking ” (1862); “ Gala-Days ” (1863); “Stumb¬ 
ling Blocks” and “A New Atmosphere” (1864); “Skirmishes and Sketches” 
(1865); “Summer Rest” and “Red-letter Days in Applethorpe ” (1866); “Wool 
Gathering,” (1867); “ Woman’s Wrongs, a Counter-Irritant ” (1868); “Battle of the 
Books” (1870); “Woman’s Worth and Worthlessness” (1871). For a period of 
three years Miss Dodge devoted herself to the little folks, producing in 1872 
“Little Folk Life,” and the next year two other volumes, entitled “Child World.” 
In the same year, 1873, came her humorous book, entitled “Twelve Miles from a 
Lemon,” and in 1874 “Nursery Noonings,” another book for and about children. 
In 1875 appeared two volumes very unlike, but both of which attracted considerable 
attention. The first was entitled “Sermons to the Clergy,” in which she gave some 
wholesome advice and pointed out many of the shortcomings of ministers. The 
other book was entitled “First Love Is Best.” In 1876 Miss Dodge’s mind seemed 
to take on a more religious, moral and still more practical turn as evinced by the 

228 












































MARY ABIGAIL DODGE. 


229 


title of the following books: “Wliat Think Ye of Christ?” (1876); “Our Common 
School bystem ” (1880); “Divine Guidance” (1881); “The Insuppressible Book ” 
(1885); and “The Washington Bible Class” (1891). 

Miss Dodge was a cousin to the distinguished statesman, James G. Blaine, of 
whom she was very fond. Much of her time during the last few years of his life 
was spent with his family at Washington, and when Mr. Blaine died in January, 
1893, she undertook, in the interest of the family, to write his life, which work she 
finished and the book was published in 1894. It is the only authoritative life of the 
statesman endorsed by the family. This was Miss Hamilton’s last book. It was 
a congenial theme to which she devoted perhaps the most painstaking and best 
work of her life. The last years of the busy author were marked by failing health. 
She died at Washington in 1896. 

-*o«- 


FISHING. 

(FROM “ GALA DAYS.”) 


OME people have conscientious scruples 
about fishing. I respect them. I had 
them myself. Wantonly to destroy, for 
mere sport, the innocent life in lake or river, seemed 
to me a cruelty and a shame. But people must fish. 
Now, then, how shall your theory and practice be 
harmonized ? Practice can’t yield. Plainly, theory 
must. A year ago 1 went out on a rock in the 
Atlantic Ocean, held a line—just to see how it 
seemed—and caught eight fishes; and every time a 
fish came up, a scruple went down. * * * * Which 
facts will partially account for the eagerness with 
which I, one morning, seconded a proposal to go 
a-fishing in a river about fourteen miles away. 
******** 
They go to the woods, I hang my prospective trout 
on my retrospective cod and march riverward. Hali¬ 
carnassus, according to the old saw, “ leaves this world 
and climbs a tree,” and, with jacknife, cord and per¬ 
severance, manufactures a fishing-rod, which he cour¬ 
teously offers to me, which I succinctly decline, in¬ 
forming him in no ambiguous phrase that I consider 
nothing beneath the best as good enough for me. 
Halicarnassus is convinced by my logic, overpowered 
by my rhetoric, and meekly yields up the best rod, 
though the natural man rebels. The bank of the 
river is rocky, steep, shrubby, and difficult of ascent 
or descent. Halicarnassus bids me tarry on the bridge, 
while he descends to reconnoitre. I am acquiescent, 
and lean over the railing awaiting the result of in¬ 


vestigation. Halicarnassus picks his way over rocks, 
sideways and zigzaggy along the bank, and down the 
river in search of fish. I grow tired of playing leasa- 
bianca and steal behind the bridge, and pick my way 
over the rocks sidewise and zigzaggy along the bank 
and up the river, in search of “fun; ” practice irre¬ 
gular and indescribable gymnastics with variable suc¬ 
cess for half an hour or so. Shout from the bridge. 
I look up. Too far off’ to hear the words, but see 
Halicarnassus gesticulating furiously, and evidently 
laboring under great excitement. Retrograde as 
rapidly as circumstances will permit. Halicarnassus 
makes a speaking trumpet of his hands and roars, 
“ I’ve found—a fish ! Left—him for—you—to 
catch ! come quick ! ”—and plunging headlong down 
the bank disappears. I am touched to the heart by 
this sublime instance of self-denial and devotion, and 
scramble up to the bridge, and plunge down after 
him. Heel of boot gets entangled in hem of dress 
every third step—fishing-line in tree-top every second ; 
progress therefore not so rapid as could be desired. 
Reach the water at last. Step cautiously from rock 
to rock to the middle of the stream—balance on a 
pebble just large enough to plant both feet on, and 
just firm enough to make it worth while to run the 
risk—drop my line into the spot designated—a quiet, 
black little pool in the rushing river—see no fish, but 
have faith in Harlicarnassus. 

“ Bite ? ” asks Halicarnassus eagerly. 

“ Not yet,” I answer sweetly. Breathless expecta- 










230 


MARY ABIGAIL DODGE. 


tion. Lips compressed. Eyes fixed. Five minutes 
gone. 

“ Bite?” calls Halicarnassus from down the river. 

“ Not yet,” hopefully. 

“ Lower your line a little. I'll come in a minute.” 
Line is lowered. Arms begin to ache. Bod sud¬ 
denly bobs down. Snatch it up. Only an old stick. 
Splash it off contemptuously. 

“ Bite? ” calls Halicarnassus from afar. 

“ No,” faintly responds Marius, amid the ruins of 
Carthage. 

“ Perhaps he will by and by,” suggests Halicar¬ 
nassus encouragingly. Five minutes more. Arms 
breaking. Knees trembling. Pebble shaky. Brain 
dizzy. Everything seems to be sailing down stream. 
Tempted to give it up, but look at the empty basket, 
think of the expectant party, and the eight cod-fish, 
and possess my soul in patience. 

“ Bite? ” comes the distant voice of Halicarnassus, 
disappearing by a bend in the river. 

“No!” I moan, trying to stand on one foot to rest 
the other, and ending by standing on neither; for 
the pebble quivers, convulses, and finally rolls over 
and expires; and only a vigorous leap and a sudden 
conversion of the fishing-rod into a balancing-pole 
save me from an ignominious bath. Weary of the 
world, and lost to shame, I gather all my remaining 
strength, wdnd the line about the rod, poise it on high, 


hurl it out in the deepest and most unobstructed part 
of the stream, * * * lie down upon the rock, pull 
my hat over my face, and dream, to the furling of 
the river, the singing of the birds, and the music of 
the wind in the trees, of another river, far, far, away. 

vt/ vL* sp 

-T* 

“ Hullo ! how many ? ” 

“ I start up wildly, and knock my hat off into the 
water. Jump after it, at the imminent risk of going 
in myself, catch it by one of the strings, and stare at 
Halicarnassus.” 

“ Asleep, I fancy? ” says Halicarnassus, interroga¬ 
tively. 

vp vp vp vp vl^ U# 

/JS ✓JN ✓Jx /J> 

We walk silently towards the woods. We meet a 
small boy with a tin pan and thirty-six fishes in it. 
We accost him. 

“ Are these fishes for sale ? ” asks Halicarnassus. 

“ Bet they be ! ” says small boy with energy. 

Halicarnassus looks meaningly at me. I look 
meaningly at Halicarnassus, and both look meaningly 
at our empty basket. “ Won’t you tell ? ” says 
Halicarnassus. “ No ; won’t you ? ” Halicarnassus 
whistles, the fishes are transferred from pan to basket, 
and we walk away “ chirp as a cricket,” reach the 
sylvan party, and are speedily surrounded. 

“ 0 what beauties ! Who caught them ? How 
many are there ? ” 






HELEN MAEIA FISKE HUNT JACKSON. 


“ THE FRIEND OF THE RED MAN.” 



NE of the sights pointed out to a traveler in the West is Cheyenne 
Canyon, a wild and weird pass in the Rocky Mountains a short dis¬ 
tance from Colorado Springs. Some years ago the writer, in com¬ 
pany with a party of tourists, drove as far as a vehicle could pass 
up the mountain-road that wound along a little stream which came 
tumbling down the narrow ravine splitting the mountain in twain. 
Soon we were compelled to abandon the wagon, and on foot we climbed the rugged 
way, first on one side and then on the other of the rushing rivulet where the narrow 
patli could find space enough to lay its crooked length along. Suddenly a little log- 
cabin in a clump of trees burst on our view. A boy with a Winchester rifle slung 
over his shoulder met us a few rods from the door and requested a fee of twenty- 
five cents each before permitting us to pass. 

“ What is it ?” inquired one of the party pointing at the cabin. “ This is the 
house Helen Hunt lived in and away above there is where she is buried,” answered 
the boy. We paid the fee, inspected the house, and then, over more rocky steeps, 
we climbed to the spot indicated near a falling cataract and stood beside a pile of 
stones thrown together by hundreds of tourists who had preceded us. It was the 
lonely grave of one of the great literary women of our age. We gathered some 
stones and added them to the pile and left her alone by the singing cataract, beneath 
the sighing branches of the firs and pines which stood like towering sentinels around 
her on Mount Jackson—for this peak was named in her honor. “ What a monu¬ 
ment!” said one, “ more lasting than hammered bronze!” “But not moreso,” said 
another, “ than the good she has done. Her influence will live while this mountain 
shall stand, unless another dark age should sweep literature out of existence.” “I 
wonder the Indians don’t convert this place into a shrine and come here to worship,” 
ventured a third person. “Her ‘Romona,’ written in their behalf, must have been 
produced under a divine inspiration. She was among all American writers their 
greatest benefactor.” 

Helen Maria Fiske was born in Amherst, Mass., October 18, 1831. She was the 
daughter of Professor Nathan Fiske of Amherst College, and was educated at 
Ipswick (Mass.) Female Seminary. In 1852 she married Captain Edward B. Hunt 
of the U. S. Navy, and lived with him at various posts until 1863, when he died. 
After this she removed to Newport, R. I., with her children, but one by one they 
died, until 1872 she was left alone and desolate. In her girlhood she had contributed 

231 

























99 9 

4mA KJ 


HELEN MARIA FISKE HUNT JACKSON. 


some verses to a Boston paper which were printed. She wrote nothing more until 
two years after the death of her husband, when she sent a number of poems to New 
York papers which were signed H. H. and they attracted wide and favorable criti¬ 
cism. These poems were collected and published under the title of “ Verses from 
H. H.” (1870). After the death of her children she decided to devote herself to 
literature, and from that time to the close of her life—twelve years later—her books 
came in rapid succession and she gained wide distinction as a writer of prose and 
verse. Both her poetry and prose works are characterized by deep thoughtfulness 
and a rare grace and beauty of diction. 

In 1873 Mrs. Hunt removed to Colorado for the benefit of her health, and in 
1875 became the wife of Wm. S. Jackson, a merchant of Colorado Springs; and it 
was in this beautiful little city, nestling at the foot of Pike’s Peak, with the perpetual 
snow on its summit always in sight, that she made her home for the remainder of 
her life, though she spent considerable time in traveling in New Mexico, Cali¬ 
fornia and the Eastern States gathering material for her books. 

Briefly catalogued, the works of Helen Hunt Jackson are: “ Verses by H. H.” 
(1870) ; “ Bits of Travel ” (1873) ; “ Bits of Talk About Home Matters ” (1873) ; 
“Sonnets and Lyrics” (1876); “Mercy Philbrick’s Choice” (1876); “ Hettie’s 
Strange History ” (1877) ; “ A Century of Dishonor ” (1881) ; “ Pomona ” (1884). 

Besides the above, Mrs. Jackson wrote several juvenile books and two novels in 
the “ No Name” series ; and that powerful series of stories, published under the pen- 
name of “ Saxe Holme,” has also been attributed to her, although there is no abso¬ 
lute proof that she wrote them. “ A Century of Dishonor ” made its author more 
famous than anything she produced up to that time, but critics now generally agree 
that “ Pomona,” her last book, is her most powerful work, both as a novel and in its 
beneficent influence. It was the result of a most profound and exhaustive study of 
the Indian problem, to which she devoted the last and best years of her life. It 
was her most conscientious and sympathetic work. It was through Helen Hunt 
Jackson’s influence that the government instituted important reforms in the treat¬ 
ment of the red men. 

In June, 1884, Mrs. Jackson met with a painful accident, receiving a bad fracture 
of her leg. She was taken to California while convalescing and there contracted 
malaria, and at the same time developed cancer. The complication of her ailments 
resulted in death, which occurred August 12, 1885. Her remains were carried back 
to Colorado, and, in accordance with her expressed wish, buried on the peak look¬ 
ing down into the Cheyenne Canyon. The spot was dear to her. The cabin below 
had been built for her as a quiet retreat, where, when she so desired, she could 
retire with one or two friends, and write undisturbed, alone with the primeval 
forest and the voices which whispered through nature, and the pure, cool mountain-air. 


CHRISTMAS NIGHT AT SAINT PETER’S. 



OW on the marble floor I lie: 

I am alone: 

Though friendly voices whisper nigh, 
And foreign crowds are passing by, 

I am alone. 


Great hymns float through 
The shadowed aisles. I hear a slow 
Refrain, “ Forgive them, for they know 
Not what they do ! ” 









HELEN MARIA FISKE HUNT JACKSON 


233 


With tender joy all others thrill; 

I have but tears : 

The false priest’s voices, high and shrill, 
Reiterate the “ Peace, good will 
I have but tears. 

I hear anew 

The nails and scourge ; then come the low 
Sad words, “ Forgive them, for they know 
Not what they do ! ” 

Close by my side the poor souls kneel; 

I turn away ; 

Half-pitying looks at me they steal; 

They think, because I do not feel, 

I turn away ; 

Ah ! if they knew, 

How following them, where’er they go, 

I hear, “ Forgive them, for they know 
Not what they do ! ” 

Above the organ’s sweetest strains 
I hear the groans 
Of prisoners, who lie in chains, 

So near and in such mortal pains, 

I hear the "roans. 


But Christ walks through 
The dungeon of St. Angelo, 

And says, “ Forgive them, for they know 
Not what they do ! ” 

And now the music sinks to sighs ; 

The lights grow dim : 

The Pastorella’s melodies 
In lingering echoes float and rise; 

The lights grow dim ; 

More clear and true, 

In this sweet silence, seem to flow 
The words, “ Forgive them, for they know 
Not what they do ! ” 

The dawn swings incense, silver gray; 

The night is past; 

Now comes, triumphant, God’s full day; 
No priest, no church can bar its way: 

The night is past: 

How on this blue 

Of God’s great banner, blaze and glow 
The words, “ Forgive them, for they know 
Not what they do !” 


-♦O* 


CHOICE OF COLORS. 


HE other day, as I was walking on one of 
the oldest and most picturesque streets of 
the old and picturesque town of Newport, 
R. I., I saw a little girl standing before the window 
of a milliner’s shop. 

It was a very rainy day. The pavement of the 
sidewalks on this street is so sunken and irregular 
that in wet weather, unless one walks with very 
great care, he steps continually into small wells of 
water. Up to her ankles in one of these wells stood 
the little girl, apparently as unconscious as if she 
were high and dry before a fire. It was a very cold 
day too. I was hurrying along, wrapped in furs, and 
not quite warm enough even so. The child was but 
thinly clothed. She wore an old plaid shawl and a 
ragged knit hood of scarlet worsted. One little red 
ear stood out unprotected by the hood, and drops of 
water trickled down over it from her hair. She 
seemed to be pointing with her finger at articles in 
the window, and talking to some one inside. I 
watched her for several moments, and then crossed 
the street to see what it all meant. I stole noiselessly 
up behind her, and she did not hear me. The win¬ 



dow was full of artificial flowers, of the cheapest sort, 
but of very gay colors. Here and there a knot of 
ribbon or a bit of lace had been tastefully added, 
and the whole effect was really remarkably gay and 
pretty. Tap, tap, tap, went the small hand against 
the window-pane; and with every tap the uncon¬ 
scious little creature murmured, in a half-whispering, 
half-singing voice, “ I choose that color.’* “ I choose 
that color.” u I choose that color.” 

I stood motionless. I could not see her face; 
but there was in her whole attitude and tone the 
heartiest content and delight. I moved a little to 
the right, hoping to see her face, without her seeing 
me ; but the slight movement caught her ear, and in 
a second she had sprung aside and turned toward me. 
The spell was broken. She was no longer the queen 
of an air-castle, decking herself in all the rainbow 
hues which pleased her eye. She was a poor beggar 
child, out in the rain, and a little frightened at the 
approach of a stranger. She did not move away, 
however; but stood eyeing me irresolutely, with that 
pathetic mixture of interrogation and defiance in her 
face which is so often seen in the prematurely devel- 











234 


HELEN MAEIA FISKE HUNT JACKSON. 


oped faces of poverty-stricken children. “ Aren’t the 
colors pretty? ” I said. She brightened instantly. 

“ Yes’m. I’d like a goon av thit blue.” 

“ But you will take cold standing in the wet,” said 
I. “ Won’t you come under my umbrella? ” 

She looked down at her wet dress suddenly, as if 
it had not occurred to her before that it was raining. 
Then she drew first one little foot and then the other 
out of the muddy puddle in which she had been 
standing, and, moving a little closer to the window, 
said, “ I’m not jist goin’ home, mem. I’d like to 
stop here a bit.” 

So I left her. But, after I had gone a few blocks, 
the impulse seized me to return by a cross street, and 
see if she were still there. Tears sprang to my eyes 
as I first caught sight of the upright little figure, 
standing in the same spot, still pointing with the 
rhythmic finger to the blues and reds and yellows, 
and half chanting under her breath, as before, “ I 
choose that color.” “ I choose that color.” “ I 
choose that color.” 

I went quietly on my way, without disturbing her 
again. But I said in my heart, “ Little Messenger, 


Interpreter, Teacher! I will remember you all my 
life.” 

Why should days ever be dark, life ever be color¬ 
less? There is always sun; there are always blue 
and scarlet and yellow and purple. We cannot reach 
them, perhaps, but we can see them, if it is only 
“through a glass, and “darkly,”—still we can see 
them. We can “ choose ” our colors. It rains, per¬ 
haps ; and we are standing in the cold. Never mind. 
If we look earnestly enough at the brightness which 
is on the other side of the glass, we shall forget the 
wet and not feel the cold. And now and then a 
passer-by, who has rolled himself up in furs to keep 
out the cold, but shivers nevertheless,—who has 
money in his purse to buy many colors, if he likes, 
but, nevertheless, goes grumbling because some colors 
are too dear for him,—such a passer-by, chancing to 
hear our voice, and see the atmosphere of our content, 
may learn a wondrous secret,—that pennilessness is 
not poverty, and ownership is not possession ; that to 
be without is not always to lack, and to reach is not 
to attain; that sunlight is for all eyes that look up, 
and color for those who “ choose.” 



* 

* 

* 



* 

* 

* 


FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 



FAMOUS AUTHOR OF “ LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.” 

F Mrs. Burnett were not a native of England, slie might be called a 
typical American woman. As all Americans, however, are descended 
at very few removes from foreign ancestors, it may, nevertheless, be 
said of the young English girl, who crossed the ocean with her 
widowed mother at the age of sixteen, that she has shown all the 
pluck, energy and perseverance usually thought of as belonging to 
Americans. She settled with her mother and sisters on a Tennessee farm ; but soon 
began to write short stories, the first of which was published in a Philadelphia 
magazine in 1867. Her first story to achieve popularity was “ That Lass o’ 
Lowrie’s,” published in “Scribner’s Magazine” in 1877. It is a story of a 
daughter of a miner, the father a vicious character, whose neglect and abuse render 
all the more remarkable the virtue and real refinement of the daughter. Mrs. 
Burnett delights in heroes and heroines whose characters contrast strongly with 
their circumstances, and in some of her stories, especially in “ A Lady of Quality,” 
published in 1895, she even verges on the sensational. 

In 1873 Miss Hodgson was married to Doctor Burnett, of Knoxville, Tennessee. 
After a two years’ tour in Europe, they took up their residence in the city of TVash- 
ington, where they have since lived. 

Mrs. Burnett’s longest novel, “ Through One Administration,” is a story of the 
political and social life of the Capital. “ Pretty Polly Pemberton,” “ Esmeralda,” 
“Louisiana,” “A Fair Barbarian,” and “ Haworth’s are, after those already 
mentioned, her most popular stories. “ That Lass o’ Lowrie’s ” has been dramatized. 
Mrs. Hodgson is most widely known, however, by her Children Stories, the most 
famous of which, “ Little Lord Fauntleroy,” appeared as a serial in “St. Nicholas” 
in 1886, and has since been dramatized and played in both England and America. 

Since 1885 her health has not permitted her to write so voluminously as she had 
previously done, but she has, nevertheless, been a frequent contributoi to peiiodicals. 
Some of her articles have been of an auto-biographical nature, and her story “ The 
One I Knew Best of All ” is an account of her life. She is very fond of society 
and holds a high place in the social world. Her alert imagination and her gift of 
expression have enabled her to use her somewhat limited oppoitunity of obsei\a- 
tion to the greatest advantage, as is shown in her successful interpietation of the 
Lancashire dialect and the founding of the story of Joan Lowrie on a casual 
glimpse, during a visit to a mining village, of a beautiful young woman followed 

bv a cursing and abusive father. 

%j O 


235 































236 


FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 


PRETTY POLLY P* 

FROM “ PRETTY POLLY PEMBERTON. 



RAMLEIGH,” ventured little Popham, 
“ you haven’t spoken for half an hour, by 
Jupiter!” 


Framleigh—Captain Gaston Framleigh, of the 
Guards—did not move. He had been sitting for 
some time before the window, in a position more 
noticeable for ease than elegance, with his arms folded 
upon the back of his chair; and he did not disturb 
himself, when he condescended to reply to his youth¬ 
ful admirer and ally. 

“Half an hour?” he said, with a tranquil half¬ 
drawl, which had a touch of affectation in its cool¬ 
ness, and yet was scarcely pronounced enough to be 
disagreeable, or even unpleasant. “ Haven’t I?” 

“ No, you have not,” returned Popham, encour¬ 
aged by the negative amiability of his manner. “ I 
am sure it is half an hour. What’s up?” 

“ Up ?” still half-abstractedly. “ Nothing ! Fact 
is, I believe I have been watching a girl!” 

Little Popham sprang down, for he had been sitting 
on the table, and advanced toward the window, hur¬ 
riedly, holding his cigar in his hand. 

“ A girl!” he exclaimed. “Where? What sort 
of a girl ?” 

“ As to sort,” returned Framleigh, “ I don’t know 
the species. A sort of girl I never saw before. But, if 
you wait, you may judge for yourself. She will soon 
be out there in the garden again. She has been 
darting in and out of the house for the last twenty 
minutes.” 

“ Out of the house?” said Popham, eagerly, “ Do 
you mean the house opposite ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ By Jupiter!” employing his usual mild expletive, 
“ look here, old fellow, had she a white dress on, and 
geranium-colored bows, and—” 

“ Yes,” said Framleigh. “ And she is rather tall 
for such a girl; and her hair is cut, on her round 
white forehead, Sir Peter Lely fashion (they call it 
banging, I believe), and she gives you the impression, 
at first, of being all eyes, great dark eyes, with—” 

“ Long, curly, black lashes,” interpolated Popham, 
with enthusiasm. “ By Jupiter ! I thought so ! It’s 
pretty Polly P.” 


He was so evidently excited that Framleigh looked 
up with a touch of interest, though he was scarcely a 
man of enthusiasm himself. 

“ Pretty Polly P.!” he repeated. “ Bather familiar 
mode of speech, isn’t it ? Who is pretty Polly P.?” 

Popham, a good-natured, sensitive little fellow, 
actually colored. 

“ Well,” he admitted, somewhat confusedly, “ I 
dare say it does sound rather odd, to people who 
don’t know her; but I can assure you, Framleigh, 
though it is the name all our fellows seem to give 
her with one accord, I am sure there is not one of 
them who means it to appear disrespectful, or—or 
even cheeky,” resorting, in desperation, to slang. 
“ She is not the sort of a girl a fellow would ever be 
disrespectful to, even though she is such a girl—so 
jolly and innocent. For my part, you know, I’d face 
a good deal, and give up a good deal any day, for 
pretty Polly P.; and I’m only one of a many.” 

Framleigh half smiled, and then looked out of 
the window again, in the direction of the house 
opposite. 

“ Daresay,” he commented, placidly. “ And very 
laudably, too. But you have not told me what the 
letter P. is intended to signify. ‘ Pretty Polly P.’ is 
agreeable and alliterative, but indefinite. It might 
mean Pretty Polly Popham.” 

“ I wish it did, by Jupiter!” cordially, and with 
more color ; “ but it does not. It means Pember¬ 
ton?” 

“ Pemberton !” echoed Framleigh, with an intona¬ 
tion almost savoring of disgust. “ You don’t mean 
to say she is that Irish fellow’s daughter ?” 

“ She is his niece,” was the answer, “ and that 
amounts to the same thing, in her case. She has 
lived with old Pemberton ever since she was four years 
old, and she is as fond of him as if he was a woman, 
and her mother; and he is as fond of her as if she 
was his daughter ; but he couldn’t help that. Every 
one is fond of her.” 

“ Ah!” said Framleigh. “ I see. As you say, 
‘ She is the sort of girl.’ ” 

“ There she is, again!” exclaimed Popham, sud¬ 
denly. 


Copyright, T. B. Peterson & Bros. 















FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 


237 


And there she was, surely enough, and they had a 
full view of her, geranium-colored bows and all. She 
seemed to be a trifle partial to the geranium-colored 
bows. Not too partial, however, for they were very 
nicely put on. Here and there, down the front of 
her white morning dress, one prettily adjusted on the 
side of her hair, one on each trim, slim, black kid 
slipper. If they were a weakness of hers, they were 
by no means an inartistic one. And as she came 
down the garden-walk, with a little flower-pot in her 
hands—a little earthen-pot, with some fresh gloss¬ 
leaved little plant in it—she was pleasant to look at, 
pretty Polly P.—very pleasant; and Gaston Fram- 
leigh was conscious of the fact. 

It was only a small place, the house opposite and 
the garden was the tiniest of gardens, being only a 
few yards of ground, surrounded by iron railings. 
Indeed, it might have presented anything but an at¬ 
tractive appearance, had pretty Polly P. not so 
crowded it with bright blooms. Its miniature-beds 
were full of brilliantly-colored flowers, blue-eyed lobelia, 
mignonette, scarlet geraniums, a thrifty rose or so, 
and numerous nasturtiums, with ferns, and much 
pleasant, humble greenery. There were narrow boxes 
of flowers upon every window-ledge, a woodbine 
climbed round the door, and, altogether, it was a very 
different place from what it might have been, under 
different circumstances. 

And down the graveled path, in the midst of all 
this flowery brightness, came Polly with her plant to 
set out, looking not unlike a flower herself. She was 
very busy in a few minutes, and she went about her 
work almost like an artist, flourishing her little 
trowel, digging a nest for her plant, and touching it, 
when she transplanted it, as tenderly as if it had been 
a day-old baby. She was so earnest about it, that, 
before very long, Framleigh was rather startled by 
hearing her begin to whistle, softly to herself, and, 
seeing that the sound had grated upon him, Popham 
colored and langhed half-apologetically. 

“ It is a habit of hers,” he said. “ She hardly 
knows when she does it. She often does things 
other girls would think strange. But she is not like 
other girls.” 

Framleigh made no reply. He remained silent, and 
simply looked at the girl. He was not in the most 
communicative of moods, this morning ; he was feel¬ 


ing gloomy and depressed, and not a little irritable, 
as he did, now and then. He had good reason, he 
thought, to give way to these fits of gloom, occasion¬ 
ally ; they were not so much an unamiable habit as 
his enemies fancied; he had some ground for them, 
though he was not prone to enter into particulars 
concerning it. Certainly he never made innocent 
little Popham, “ Lambkin Popham,” as one of his 
fellow-officers had called him, in a brilliant moment, 
his confidant. He liked the simple, affectionate little 
fellow, and found his admiration soothing; but the 
time had not yet arrived, when the scales not yet hav¬ 
ing fallen from his eyes, he could read such guileless, 
almost insignificant problems as “ Lambkin ” Popham 
clearly. 

So his companion, only dimly recognizing the out¬ 
ward element of his mood, thought it signified a dis¬ 
taste for that soft, scarcely unfeminine, little piping 
of pretty Polly’s, and felt bound to speak a few words 
in her favor. 

“ She is not a masculine sort of a girl at all, Fram¬ 
leigh,” he said. “ You would be sure to like her. 
The company fairly idolize her.” 

“Company!” echoed Framleigh. “What com- 

on 

pany ? 

“ Old Buxton’s company,” was the reply. “ The 
theatrical lot at the Prince’s, you know, where she 
acts.” 

Framleigh had been bending forward, to watch 
Polly patting the mould daintily, as she bent over 
her flower bed ; but he drew back at this, conscious 
of experiencing a shock, far stronger and more 
disagreeable than the whistling had caused him to 
feel. 

“ An actress !” he exclaimed, in an annoyed tone. 

“ Yes, and she works hard enough, too, to support 
herself, and help old Pemberton,” gravely. 

“ The worse for her,” with impatience. “ And the 
greater rascal old Pemberton, for allowing it,” 

It was just at this moment that Polly looked up. 
She raised her eyes carelessly to their window, and 
doing so, caught sight of them both. Young Pop¬ 
ham blushed gloriously, after his usual sensitive fash¬ 
ion. and she recognized him at once. She did not 
blush at all herself, however ; she just gave him an arch 
little nod, and a delightful smile, which showed her 
pretty white teeth. 






MARY NOAILLES MURFREE. 

(CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK.) 

Author of the “Prophet of the Smoky Mountains .” 

HE pen name of Charles Egbert Craddock lias become familiarly 
known throughout the English-speaking world in connection with 
the graphic delineations of character in the East Tennessee Moun¬ 
tains, to which theme the writings of this talented author have been 
devoted. Until long after the name had become famous the writer 
was supposed to be a man, and the following amusing story is told of 
the way in which the secret leaked out. Her works were published by a Boston 
editor, and the heavy black handwriting, together with the masculine ring of her 
stories, left no suspicion that their author was a delicate woman. Thomas Baily 
Aldrich, who was editor of the “ Atlantic Monthly,” to which her writings came, 
used to say, after an interval had elapsed subsequent to her last contribution, “I 
wonder if Craddock has taken in his winter supply of ink and can let me have a 
serial.” One day a card came to Mr. Aldrich bearing the well-known name in the 
well-known writing, and the editor rushed out to greet his old contributor, expecting 
to see a rugged Tennessee mountaineer. When the slight, delicate little woman 
arose to answer his greeting it is said that Mr. Aldrich put his hands to his face and 
simply spun round on his heels without a word, absolutely bewildered with astonish¬ 
ment. 

Miss Murfree was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1850, and is the great- 
granddaughter of Colonel Hardy Murfree of Revolutionary fame, for whom the 
city of Murfreesboro was named. Her father was a lawyer and a literary man, 
and Mary was carefully educated. Unfortunately in her childhood a stroke of 
paralysis made her lame for life. After the close of the war, the family being left 
in destitute circumstances, they moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and Miss Murfree 
contributed largely to their pecuniary aid by her fruitful pen. Her volumes 
include “In the Tennessee Mountains” (1884), “Where the Battle was Fought” 
(1884), “Down the Ravine” (1885), “The Prophet of the Great Smoky Moun¬ 
tains” (1885), “In the Clouds” (1886), “The Story of Keedon Bluffs” (1887), 
“The Despot of Broomsedge Cove” (1888), all of which works have proven their 
popularity by a long-continued sale, and her subsequent works will no doubt achieve 
equal popularity. She has contributed much matter to the leading magazines of the 
day. She is a student of humanity and her portraitures of Tennessee moun- 


































MARY NOAILLES MURFREE. 


239 


taineers have great historic value aside from the entertainment they furnish to the 
careless reader. It is her delineation of mountain character and her description of 
mountain scenery that have placed her works so prominently to the front in this 
critical and j^rolific age of novels. “Her style,” says a recent reviewer, “is bold, 
full ol humor, yet as delicate as a bit of lace, to which she adds great power of plot 
and a keen wit, together with a homely philosophy bristling with sparkling truths. 
For instance, “the little old woman who sits on the edge of a chair” in one of her 
novels, and remarks “There ain’t nothin’ so becomin’ to fools as a sliet mouth,” 
has added quite an original store to America’s already proverbial literature. 

-K>«- 


THE CONFESSION* 

(FROM “ THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS.”) 



HE congregation composed itself to listen to 
the sermon. There was an expectant 
pause. Kelsey remembered ever after the 
tumult of emotion with which he stepped forward 
to the table and opened the book. He turned to the 
New Testament for his text,—and the leaves with a 
familiar hand. Some ennobling phase of that won¬ 
derful story which would touch the tender, true 
affinity of human nature for the higher things.— 
from this he would preach to-day. And yet, at the 
same moment, with a contrariety of feeling from 
which he shrank aghast, there was sulking into his 
mind that gruesome company of doubts. In double 
file they came: fate and free agency, free-will and 
fore-ordination, infinite mercy and infinite justice, 
God’s loving kindness and man’s intolerable misery, 
redemption and damnation. He had evolved them 
all from his own unconscious logical faculty, and they 
pursued him as if he had, in some spiritual necromancy, 
conjured up a devil—nay, a legion of devils. Per¬ 
haps if he had known how they had assaulted the 
hearts of men in times gone past; how they had been 
combated and baffled, and yet have risen and pur¬ 
sued again; how in the scrutiny of science and 
research men have passed before their awful presence, 
analyzed them, philosophized about them, and found 
them interesting; how others, in the levity of the 
world, having heard of them, grudged the time to 
think upon them,—if he had known all this, he 
micht have felt some courage in numbers. As it was, 
there was no fight left in him. He closed the book 
with a sudden impulse, “ My frien’s,” he said, “ I 
stan’ not hyar ter preach ter day, but fur confession.” 


There was a galvanic start among the congregation, 
then intense silence. 

“ I hev los’ my faith ! ” he cried out, with a poig¬ 
nant despair. “ God ez’ gin it—ef thear is a God— 
he’s tuk it away. You-uns kin go on. You-uns kin 
b’lieve. Yer paster b’lieves, an’ he’ll lead ye ter 
grace.—leastwise ter a better life. But fur me 
thar’s the nethermost depths of hell, ef ”—how his 
faith and his unfaith now tried him!— u ef thar be 
enny hell. Leastwise—Stop, brother,” he held up 
his hand in deprecation, for Parson Tobin had risen 
at last, and with a white, scared face. Nothing like 
this had ever been heard in all the length and breadth 
of the Great Smoky Mountains. “ Bear with me a 
little; ye’ll see me hyar no more. Fur me thar is 
shame, ah ! an’ trial, ah ! an’ doubt, ah! an’ despair, 
ah ! The good things o’ heaven air denied. My 
name is ter be er byword an’ a reproach ’mongst ye. 
Ye’ll grieve ez ye hev ever learn the Word from me, 
ah! Ye’ll be held in derision! An’ I hev bed 
trials,—none like them es air cornin’, cornin’ down 
the wind. I hev been a man marked fur sorrow, 
an’ now fur shame.” He stood erect; he looked 
bold, youthful. The weight of his secret, lifted now, 
had been heavier than he knew. In his eyes shone 
that strange light which was frenzy or prophecy, or 
inspiration; in his voice rang a vibration they had 
never before heard. “ I will go forth from ’mongst 
ye,—I that am not of ye. Another shall gird me an’ 
carry me where I would not. Hell an’ the devil hev 
prevailed agin me. Pray fur me, brethren, ez I 
cannot pray fur myself. Pray that God may yet 
speak ter me—speak from out o’ the whirlwind.” 


* Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 








I 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. 

AUTHOR OF “ GATES AJAR!” 

HIS is said to be a practical age and there is much talk about the 
materialistic tendencies of the time and the absorption of the people 
in affairs of purely momentary and transient importance. It is 
nevertheless true that the books which attract the most attention 
are the most widely read, and best beloved are those which deal with 
the great questions of life and of eternity. It was upon “ The Gates 
Ajar ” that Elizabeth Stuart Phelps founded her reputation. It dealt entirely with 
the questions of the future life treating them in a way remarkably fresh and vigorous, 
not to say daring, and its reception was so favorable that it went through twenty 
editions during its first year. 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was the daughter of a professor in the Andover Theo¬ 
logical Seminary. She had been christened with another name; but on the death 
of her mother, in 1852, she took her name in full. She had been publishing sketches 
and stories since her thirteenth year, her writings being largely related to charitable, 
temperance and other reform work. She has written a long series of books begin¬ 
ning with “ Ellen’s Idol” in 1864, and including a number of series—“The Tiny 
Series,” “ The Gypsy Series,” etc., intended for Sunday-school libraries, and some 
fifteen or twenty stories and books of poems. Besides these, she has written sketches, 
stories and poems in large numbers for the current magazines. 

In 1888 she became the wife of Rev. Herbert D. Ward. Their summer home is 
at East Gloucester, Massachusetts, while in winter they live at Newton Highlands. 
Thoughtfulness and elevation of spirit mark all Mrs. Ward’s literary work. The 
philanthropic purpose is evident in every one of them, and she contributes to the 
cause of humanity, not only through her books, but in the time, labor and money 
which she freely bestows. Mrs. Ward may be taken as a practical example of that 
noble type of American women who combine literary skill, broad intelligence, and 
love of mankind with a high degree of spirituality and whose work for humanity 
is shown in the progress of our people. Her purpose has always been high and 
the result of her work ennobling. In her books the thought of man and the 
thought of God blend in a harmony very significant of the spirit of the time, a spirit 
which she has done much to awaken and to promote. 

240 




























ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. 


241 


THE HANDS AT HAYLE AND KELSO’S * 
(from “the silent partner.”) 


F you are one of the “ hands,” then in Hayle 
and Kelso you have a breakfast of bread 
and molasses probably; you are apt to eat 
it while you dress. Somebody is beating the kettle, 
but you cannot wait for it. Somebody tells you that 
}ou have forgotten your shawl; you throw it over one 
shoulder and step out, before it is fastened, into the 
sudden raw air. \ou left lamplight indoors, you find 
moonlight without. The night seems to have over¬ 
slept itself; you have a fancy for trying to wake it— 
would like to shout at it or cry through it, but feel 
very cold, and leave that for the bells to do by-and- 
b J ? 

lou and the bells are the only waking things in 
life. The great brain of the world is in serene re¬ 
pose ; the great heart of the world lies warm to the 
core with dreams ; the great hands of the world, the 
patient, the perplexed—one almost fancies at times, 
just for fancy—seeing you here by the morning moon, 
the dangerous hands alone are stirring in the dark. 

You hang up your shawl and your crinoline, and 
understand, as you go shivering by gaslight to your 
looms, that you are chilled to the heart, and that you 
were careless about your shawl, but do not consider 
carefulness worth your while by nature or by habit; 
a little less shawl means a few less winters in which 
to require shawling. You are a godless little creature, 
but you cherish a stolid learning, in those morning 
moons, towards making an experiment of death and 
a wadded coffin. 

By the time the gas is out, you cease perhaps—though 
you cannot depend upon that—to shiver, and incline 
less and less to the wadded coffin, and more to a chat 
with your neighbor in the alley. Your neighbor is 
of either sex and any description as the case may be. 
In any event—warming a little with the warming 
day—you incline more and more to chat. 

If you chance to be a cotton weaver, you are pres¬ 
ently warm enough. It is quite warm enough in 
the weaving-room. The engines respire into the 
weaving-room ; with every throb of their huge lungs 
you swallow their breath. The weaving-room stifles 

15 


with steam. The window-sills are gutted to prevent 
the condensed stream from running in streams along 
the floor; sometimes they overflow, and the water 
stands under the looms. The walls perspire pro¬ 
fusely ; on a damp day drops will fall from the roof. 
The windows of the weaving-room are closed. They 
must be closed; a stir in the air will break your 
threads. I here is no air to stir; you inhale for a 
substitute a motionless hot moisture. If you chance 
to be a cotton weaver, it is not in March that you 
think most about your coffin. 

Being a “ hand ” in Hayle and Kelso, you are 
used to eating cold luncheon in the cold at noon ; or 
you walk, for the sake of a cup of soup or coffee, lialf- 
a-mile, three-quarters, a mile and a-half, and back. 
You are allowed three-quarters of an hour to do 
this. You go and come upon the jog-trot. 

******;(;;); 

From swearing you take to singing; both perhaps, 
are equal relief—active and diverting. There is 
something curious about that singing of yours. The 
tune, the place, the singers, characterize it sharply; 
the waning light, the rival din, the girls with tired 
faces. You start some little thing with a refrain, and 
a ring to it. A hymn, it is not unlikely ; something 
of a River and of Waiting, and of Toil and Rest, or 
Sleep, or Crowns, or Harps, or Home, or Green 
Fields, or Flowers, or Sorrow, or Repose, or a dozen 
other things ; but always, it will be noticed, of simple 
spotless things, such as will surprise the listener who 
caught you at your oath of five minutes past. You 
have other songs, neither simple nor spotless, it may 
be; but you never sing them at your work when the 
waning day is crawling out from spots beneath your 
loom, and the girls lift up their tired faces to catch 
and keep the chorus in the rival din. 

*1/ *L< <1/ »1/ 

'f' 'V' 'T* *T* 'T' 

You are singing when the bell strikes, and singing 
still when you clatter down the stairs. Something 
of the simple spotlessness of the little song is on 
your face when you dip into the wind and dusk. 


* Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 















AMELIA E. BAER. 

THE POPULAR NOVELIST. 

ERHAPS no other writer in the United States commands so wide a 
circle of readers, botli at home and abroad, as does Mrs. Barr. She 
is, however, personally, very little known, as her disposition is some¬ 
what shy and retiring, and most of her time is spent at her home 
on the Storm King Mountain at Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New 
York 

Mrs. Barr’s life has been an eventful one, broken in upon by sorrow, bereavement 
and hardship, and she has risen superior to her trials and made her way through 
difficulties in a manner which is possible only to an individual of the strongest 
character. 

Amelia E. Huddleston was born at Ulverstone, in the northwest of England, in 
1832. She early became a thorough student, her studies being directed by her 
father, who was an eloquent and learned preacher. When she was seventeen, she 
went to a celebrated school in Scotland; but her education was principally derived 
from the reading of books to her father. 

When about eighteen she was married to Robert Barr, and soon after came to 
America, traveling in the West and South. They were in New Orleans in 1856 
and were driven out by the yellow fever, and settled in Austin, Texas, where Mr. 
Barr received an appointment in the comptroller’s office. Removing to Galveston 
after the Civil War, Mr. Barr and his four sons died in 1876 of yellow fever. As 
soon as she could safely do so, Mrs. Barr took her three daughters to New York, 
where she obtained an appointment to assist in the education of the three sons of a 
prominent merchant. When she had prepared these boys for college, she looked 
about for other means of livelihood, and, by the assistance of Henry Ward Beecher 
and Doctor Lyman Abbott, she was enabled to get some contributions accepted by 
Messrs. Harper & Brothers, for whose periodicals she wrote for a number of years. 
An accident which happened to her in 1884 changed her life and conferred upon 
the world a very great benefit. She was confined to her chair for a considerable 
time, and, being compelled to abandon her usual methods of work, she wrote her 
first novel, “ Jan Vedder’s Wife.” It was instantly successful, running through 
many editions, and has been translated into one or two European languages. Since 
that time she has published numerous stories. One of the most successful was 
“Friend Olivia,” a study of Quaker character which recalls the closing years of 
the Commonwealth in England, and which her girlhood’s home at LTlverstone, the 
scene of the rise of Quakerism, gave her special advantages in preparing. It is an 

242 





































AMELIA E. BAER. 


243 


unusually powerful story ; and the pictures of Cromwell and George Fox are not only 
refreshingly new and bright but remarkably just and appreciative. Some of her other 
stories are “ Feet of Clay,” the scene of which is laid on the Isle of Man; “ The Bow of 
Orange Bibbon,” a study of Dutch life in New York; “ Remember the Alamo,” 
recalling the revolt of Texas; “She Loved a Sailor,” which deals with sea life and 
which draws its scenes from the days of slavery ; “ The Last of the MacAllisters •” 
“ A Sister of Esau ; ” and “ A Bose of a Hundred Leaves.” Only a slight study of 
Mrs. Barr’s books is necessary to show the wide range of her sympathies, her quick 
and vivid imagination, and her wonderful literary power ; and her career has been 
an admirable illustration of the power of some women to win success even under the 
stress of sorrow, disaster and bereavement. 


-- 

LITTLE JAN’S TRIUMPH * 
(from “jane vedder’s wife.”) 


S she approached her house, she saw a crowd 
k°y s > aiR f httle Jan walking proudly 
rairarj ] j n f ron t of them. One was playing 
“ Miss Flora McDonald's Reel ” on a violin, and 
the gay strains were accompanied by finger-snapping, 
whistling, and occasional shouts. “ There is no cpiiet 
to be found anywhere, this morning,” thought Mar¬ 
garet, but her curiosity was aroused, and she went 
towards the children. They saw her coming, and 
with an accession of clamor hastened to meet her. 
Little Jan carried a faded, battered wreath of un¬ 
recognizable materials, and he walked as proudly as 
Pompey may have walked in a Roman triumph. 
When Margaret saw it, she knew well what had hap¬ 
pened, and she opened her arms, and held the boy to 
her heart, and kissed him over and over, and cried 
out, “Oh, my brave little Jan, brave little Jan! 
How did it happen then ? Thou tell me quick.’ 

“ Hal Ragner shall tell thee, my mother; ” and 
H al eagerly stepped forward : 

“ It was last night, Mistress Yedder, we were all 
watching for the‘ Arctic Bounty; ’ but she did not come, 
and this morning as we were playing, the word was 
passed that she had reached Peter Fae’s pier. Then 
we all ran, but thou knowest that thy Jan runs like a 
red deer, and so he got far ahead, and leaped on 
board, and was climbing the mast first of all. Then 
Bor Skade, he tried to climb over him, and Nichol 
Sinclair, he tried to hold him back, but the sailors 
shouted, ‘ Bravo, little Jan \ edder ! and the skip¬ 
per shouted ‘ Bravo !’ and thy father, he shouted 


higher than all the rest. And when Jan had cut 
loose the prize, he was like to greet for joy, and he 
clapped his hands, and kissed Jan, and he gave him 
five gold sovereigns,—see, then, if he did not!” 
And little Jan proudly put his hand in his pocket, 
and held them out in his small soiled palm. 

The feat which little Jan had accomplished is one 
which means all to the Shetland boy that his first 
buffalo means to the Indian youth. When a whaler 
is in Arctic seas, the sailors on the first of May make 
a garland of such bits of ribbons, love tokens, and 
keepsakes, as have each a private history, and this 
they tie to the top of the mainmast. There it 
swings, blow high or low, in sleet and hail, until the 
ship reaches her home-port. Then it is the supreme 
emulation of every lad, and especially of every sailor’s 
son, to be first on board and first up the mast to cut 
it down, and the boy who does it is the hero of the 
day, and has won his footing on every Shetland boat. 

What wonder, then, that Margaret was proud and 
happy ? What wonder that in her glow of delight 
the thing she had been seeking was made clear to 
her ? How could she go better to Suneva than with 
this crowd of happy boys? If the minister thought 
she ought to share one of her blessings with Suneva, 
she would double her obedience, and ask her to share 
the mother’s as well as the wife’s joy. 

“ One thing I wish, boys,” she said happily, “let 
us go straight to Peter Fae’s house, for Hal Ragner 
must tell Suneva Fae the good news also.” So, with 
a shout, the little company turned, and very soon 


* Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co. 










244 


AMELIA E. BARR. 


Suneva, who was busy salting some fish in the cellar 
of her house, heard her name called by more than 
fifty shrill voices, in fifty different keys. 

She hurried upstairs, saying to herself, “ It will be 
good news, or great news, that has come to pass, no 
doubt; for when ill-luck has the day, he does not call 
any one like that; he comes sneaking in.” Her rosy 
face was full of smiles when she opened the door, 
but when she saw Margaret and Jan standing first of 
all, she was for a moment too amazed to speak. 

Margaret pointed to the wreath : “ Our Jan took 
it from the topmast of the ‘ Arctic Bounty,’ ” she 


said. “ The boys brought him home to me, and I 
have brought him to thee, Suneva. I thought thou 
would like it.” 

“ Our Jan !” In those two words Margaret can¬ 
celled everything remembered against her. Suneva’s 
eyes filled, and she stretched out both her hands to 
her step-daughter. 

“ Come in, Margaret! Come in, my brave, darling 
Jan ! Come in, boys, every one of you ! There is 
cake, and wheat bread, and preserved fruit enough 
for you all; and I shall find a shilling for every boy 
here, who has kept Jan's triumph with him.” 


TIIE OLD PIANO. 


W still and dusky is the long-closed room ! 
What lingering shadows and what faint 

O O 

perfume 

Of Eastern treasures!—sandal wood and 
scent 

With nard and cassia and with roses blent. 

Let in the sunshine. 

Quaint cabinets are here, boxes and fans, 

And hoarded letters full of hopes and plans. 

I pass them by. I came once more to see 
The old piano, dear to memory, 

In past days mine. 

Of all sad voices from forgotten years, 

Its is the saddest; see what tender tears 
Drop on the yellow keys as, soft and slow, 

I play some melody of long ago. 

How strange it seems ! 

The thin, weak notes that once were rich and strong 
Give only now the shadow of a song— 

The dying echo of the fuller strain 
That I shall never, never hear again, 

Unless in dreams. 



What hands have touched it! Fingers small and 
white, 

Since stiff and weary with life’s toil and fight; 

Dear clinging hands that long have been at rest, 
Folded serenely on a quiet breast. 

Only to think, 

0 white sad notes, of all the pleasant days, 

The happy songs, the hymns of holy praise, 

The dreams of love and youth, that round you cling ! 
Do they not make each sighing, trembling string 
A mighty link ? 

The old piano answers to my call. 

And from my fingers lets the lost notes fall. 

0 soul! that I have loved, with heavenly birth 
Wilt thou not keep the memory of earth, 

Its smiles and sighs? 

Shall wood and metal and white ivory 
Answer the touch of love with melody, 

And thou forget ? Dear one, not so. 

I move thee yet (though how I may not know) 
Beyond the skies. 











MISS ALICE FLENCH. 


(Octave Thanet ). 



THE REPRESENTATIVE NOVELIST OF THE SOUTHWEST. 

|S one of the most prominent among our modern women novelists 
stands the name of Octave Thanet. The real owner of this widely 
known pen-name is Miss Alice French. Though Miss French is 
recognized as the representative novelist of Missouri, Arkansas, and 
the Southwest generally, where she has lived for many years, she is 
by birth and education a genuine Yankee woman, and on both sides 
a descendant from old Puritan stock. Her ancestors came over in the Mayflower. 
They count among them many Bevolutionary heroes and not a few persecutors of 
the witches one hundred and fifty and two hundred years ago, and they, also, num¬ 
ber to themselves some of the modern rulers and prominent ministers of Massa¬ 
chusetts. 

Mr. French, the father of the authoress, was during his life a loyal Westerner, 
but it is said never lost his fondness for the East and went there regularly every sum¬ 
mer, and his daughter still maintains the custom. While Mr. French was a thorough 
business man, he was, moreover, an enthusiastic lover of books and the fine arts, 
and instilled into Miss Alice during her early training a love for reading, and 
encouraged her to write. 

Shortly after her graduation at Abbott Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Miss 
French sent a manuscript for publication, but the editors to whom she sent it advised 
her to wait until her judgment was more mature and her reading more extensive. 
She accepted their advice and remained silent for several years, and then sent her 
first book, “ The Communist’s Wife,” to a New York publisher, who declined it, 
whereupon she forwarded it to other publishers, and it was finally brought out by 
Lippincotts of Philadelphia, and made such a success that assured easy access for 
her subsequent works, through any publisher to whom she would send them, to the 
reading world. The royalty on her various books now brings her a handsome and 
steady income. 

Among the most prominent publications of Octave Tlianet’s are “ Knitters in 
the Sun” (Boston, 1887); “ Otto the Knight” (1888); “ Expiated ” and “ We 
All,” issued from New York in 1890. Since that date she has written several other 
volumes of equal merit, each new book adding to her well-established reputation 
and popularity. She has also edited the best “ Letters of Lady Montague. 

The pen-name of this writer was the result of chance. When in school she had 
a room-mate, Octavia, who was familiarly known as Octave. The word Thanet she 

245 


t 






































246 


MISS ALICE FRENCH. 


saw by chance printed on a passing freight car. It struck her fancy and she 
adopted it; hence the pseudonym “ Octave Thanet.” It is said that she regrets hav¬ 
ing adopted a nom-de-plume , but since she has made her fame under that name she 
continues to use it. Miss French is something of a philosopher and artist as well 
as a novelist, and is deeply read in historical studies as well as the English-German 
philosophers. She is one of the most domestic of women and declares that she is a 
great deal better cook than a writer, and that it is a positive delight to her to arrange 
a dinner. Most prominent women have a fad, and that of Miss French is for col¬ 
lecting china. She is also fond of outdoor sports and takes considerable interest 
in politics. While not an advocate of woman’s suffrage, she declares herself to be a 
moderate free-trade Democrat, and a firm believer in honest money. Whether the 
latter term implies a single gold standard or the free coinage of silver, the writer is 
unable to ascertain. 

The strength of Octave Thanet’s writing is largely due to the fact that she studies 
her subjects assiduously, going to original sources for her pictures of bygone times, 
and getting both facts and impressions so far as possible from the fountain-head. 
She is regarded not only as the best delineator of the life of the middle Western 
States, but the most careful student of human nature, and, perhaps the best story¬ 
teller among our modern short-story writers. She lives a simple life on a farm and 
draws her characters from the people around about her. 


TWO LOST AND FOUND* 


[FROM “ KNITTERS IN THE SUN.”] 


HEY rode along, Ruffner furtively watch¬ 
ing Bud, until finally the elder man spoke 
with the directness of primitive natures 
and strong excitement: 

“ Whut’s come ter ye, Bud Quinn ? Ye seem all 
broke up ’beout this yere losin’ yo’ little trick (child); 
yet ye didn’t useter set no gre’t store by ’er—least, 
looked like—” 

“ I knaw,” answered Bud. lifting his heavy eyes, 
too numb himself with weariness and misery to be 
surprised,—“ I knaw, an’ ’t are curi’s ter me too. 
I didn’t set no store by ’er w’en I had ’er. I taken 
a gredge agin ’er kase she hadn’t got no good sense, 
an’ you all thro wed it up to me fur a jedgment. 
An' knowin’ how I hadn’t done a thing to hurt Zed, 
it looked cl’ar agin right an’ natur’ fur the Lord ter 
pester me that a-way; so someways I taken the 
notion ’twar the devil, and that he got inter Ma’ 
Bowlin’, an’ I mos’ eudn’t b’ar the sight ’er that pore 
little critter. But the day she got lost kase ’er tryin’ 
ter meet up with me, I ’lowed mabbe he tolled ’er olf, 



an’ I sorter felt bad fur ’er, an’ w’en I seen them little 
tracks ’er her’n, someways all them mean feelin’s I 
got they jes broked off short insider me like a string 
mought snap. They done so. An’ I wanted thet 
chile bader’n I ever wanted anything.” 

“ Law me ! ” said Ruffner, quite puzzled. “ But, 
say, Bud, ef ye want ’er so bad’s all thet, ye warn’t 
wanter mad the Lord by lyin’, kase He are yo’ on’y 
show now. Bud Quinn, did ye hurt my boy?” He 
had pushed his face close to Bud’s, and his mild eyes 
were glowing like live coals. 

“ Naw, Mr. Ruffner,” answered Bud, quietly. “ I 
never teched a ha’r ’er ’is head !” 

Ruffner kept his eager and almost fierce scrutiny a 
moment, then he drew a long gasping sigh, crying, 
“ Blame my skin ef I don' b’lieve ye ! I’ve ’lowed, 
fur a right smart, we all used ye mighty rough.” 

“ ’Tain’t no differ,” said Bud, dully. Nothing 
mattered now, the poor fellow thought; Ma’ Bow¬ 
lin’ was dead, and Sukey hated him. 

Ruffner whistled slowly and dolefully ; that was his 


* By Permission Hougton Mifflin k Co. 











MISS ALICE FRENCH. 


247 


way of expressing sympathy ; but the whistle died on 
his lips, for Bud smote his shoulder, then pointed to¬ 
ward the trees. 

“ Look a-thar!” whispered Bud, with a ghastly 
face and dilating eyeballs. “ Oh, Lord A’mighty, 
thar’s her—an’ him ! ” 

Ruffner saw a boat leisurely propelled by a long 
pole approaching from the river-side, a black-haired 
young man in the bow with the pole, a fair-haired 
little girl in the stern. The little girl jumped up, and 
at the same instant a shower of water from light fly¬ 
ing heels blinded the young man. 

“ Paw ! Paw !” screamed the little girl. “ Maw 
tole Ma’ Bowlin’—meet up—paw !”**** 

Just as the big clock in the store struck the last 
stroke of six, Sukey Quinn, who had been cowering 
on the platform steps, lifted her head and put her 
hand to her ear. Then everybody heard it, the long 
peal of a horn. The widow from Georgia ran quickly 
up to Sukey and threw her arms about her shoulders. 


For a second the people held their breath. It had 
been arranged that whoever found the lost child 
should give the signal by blowing his horn, once if the 
searchers came too late, three times if the child should 
be alive. Would the horn blow again ? 

“ It are Bud's horn ! ” sobbed Sukey. “ He’d never 
blow fur onst. Hark! Thar’t goes agin ! Three 
times! An’ me wouldn’t hev no truck with ’im, but 
she set store by Ma’ Bowlin’ all the time.” 

Horn after horn caught up the signal joyfully, and 
when the legitimate blowing was over, two enterpris¬ 
ing boys exhausted themselves on a venerable horn 
which was so cracked that no one would take it. In 
an incredibly short time every soul within hearing dis¬ 
tance, not to mention a herd of cattle and a large 
number of swine, had run to the store, and when at 
last two horses’ heads appeared above the hill, and the 
crowd could see a little pink sun-bonnet against Bud 
Quinn’s brown jean, an immense clamor rolled out. 












JANE GOODWIN AUSTIN. 


THE STORY-TELLER OF THE PILGRIMS. 



HIS famous daughter of the Pilgrims has become a sjiecialist in their 
behalf, and has pledged her remaining years to develop their story. 
Every summer she visits Plymouth, where she constantly studies 
not only the written records of the Pilgrim Fathers, but the crumbling 
gravestones and the oral traditions which have come down among 
their descendants. Her contribution to the literature of early New 
England possesses a rare value, found, perhaps, in no other writer, enriched from 
her intimate knowledge of the pioneers of the Eastern Colonists gained from her 
long study, thorough reading, and a careful investigation of their history and 
traditions. 

Mrs. Austin was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1831. Her parents were 
from Plymouth, and counted their lineage back to the Mayflower Pilgrims in no less 
than eight distinct lines. She also claims a descent from Francis le Baron ; thus, 
believers in heredity will recognize in this the root of Mrs. Austin’s remarkable 
devotion to Pilgrim stories and traditions. Her father, Isaac Goodwin, was a lawyer 
of considerable prominence, and had also devoted much study to genealogy. Her 
brother, the Honorable John A. Goodwin, was the author of “The Pilgrim Republic,” 
which is considered the best history of the settlement of Plymouth. Her mother, 
besides being a poet and song-writer, was also a lover of the traditions and anecdotes 
of her native region, and many of the stories embodied in Mrs. Austin’s later works 
she has heard as a child at her mother’s knee, especially those relating to “The 
Nameless Nobleman,” “Francis le Baron and His Family.” 

Among the best of Mrs. Austin’s Pilgrim story-books are “The Nameless 
Nobleman” (1881); “Standish of Standish” (1889); “Doctor le Baron and His 
Daughters” (1890); and “Betty Alden” (1891). These cover the ground from the 
landing of the Pilgrims upon Plymouth Rock in 1620 to the days of the Revolu¬ 
tion in 1775. Aside from these books, Mrs. Austin has produced in addition to a 
number of magazine stories and some poems, “Fairy Dream” (1859); “Dora 
Darling” (1865); “Outpost” (1866); “Taylor Boy” (1867); “Cypher” (1869); 
“The Shadow of Moloch Mountains” (1870) ; “Moon-Folk” (1874) ; “ Mrs. Beau¬ 
champ Brown ” (1880); and “ Nantucket Scraps ” (1882). Since 1891 Mrs. Austin 
has added a fifth volume to her “ Pilgrim Stories,” completing the series. All of 
her writings are in a finished style, remarkable alike for delicacy, purity and clear¬ 
ness of expression, and her work is distinctly American. 

248 





























JANE GOODWIN AUSTIN. 


249 


Personally Mrs. Austin is a charming woman, much beloved by those who know 
her best. She has three children, and her home is with a married daughter at 
Roxbury, Massachusetts; but she spends much of her time in Boston. 

— ■ 

AN AFTERNOON IN NANTUCKET * 

FROM “ NANTUCKET SCRAPS,” 1883 . 


HE drowsy hours of afternoon were devoted 
to the museum, collected and exhibited by 
the public-spirited widow of a sea-captain 
named McCleve. An upper room to her comfortable 
house is devoted to the curios, although, like attar of 
roses, or some penetrating oils, they seem to have 
saturated the entire mansion,—the good-natured 
proprietress occasionally haling a favored guest away 
from the rest to look at some quaint picture, piece 
of china, or bit of furniture in her own private apart¬ 
ments. The party of twelve or fourteen collected on 
this special afternoon were taken to the upper room 
and seated around a small table, as if for a spiritual 
seance , the hostess arranging precedence and proximity 
with an autocratic good-humor to which everybody 
yielded except the senor, who, standing looking in 
at the door, was presently accosted with— 

“ That gentleman at the door—why—I’ve seen 
that face before ! Don’t you tell me it’s Sam ! ” 

“ No, I won’t, Aunty McCleve, for you’d be sure 
to contradict me if I did,” replied the senor, coolly; 
whereupon Aunty shook him affectionately by the 
hand, assuring him he was the same “ saucy boy ” he 
used to be, and dragged him most reluctantly to a 
seat in the magical circle. 

“ At what period of the entertainment do we pay ?” 
inquired one of the persons one meets everywhere, 
and who may be called the whit-leather of society. 
Mrs. McCleve looked at him with an appreciative 
eye for a moment, and then quietly replied: 

“ Well, it isn’t often people bring it out quite so 
plain as that, but I guess you'd better pay now before 
you forget it.” Whit-leather does not suffer from 
sarcasm, and the practical man, producing a quarter 
of a dollar, held it tight while asking— 

“ Have you got ten cents change ? ” 

“ No, brother; but you can keep your quarter till 
I have,” replied Aunty, with the quiet gleam still in 
her eye, and the business was soon adjusted. This 


over, she placed upon the table a tray containing 
some really exquisite carvings in whale’s-tooth ivory, 
comprising a set of napkin-rings, thread-winders, 
spoons of various sizes, knife-handles, and several 
specimens of a utensil peculiar to Nantucket, called 
a jagging-knife, used for carving ornamental patterns 
in pastry,—a species of embroidery for which Nan¬ 
tucket housewives were once famous, although, 
“pity ’tis, tis true,” they have now largely emanci¬ 
pated themselves from such arts. 

As the guests examined these really wonderful 
products of talent almost unaided by implements or 
training, one of the ladies naturally inquired : “ Who 
did these?” The hostess assumed a sibylline atti¬ 
tude and tone: “ Perhaps, my dear, you can tell us 
that; and if so, you'll be the first one I ever met 
that could.” This obscure intimation of course 
awakened an interest far deeper than the carvings, 
in every mind ; and in reply to a shower of question¬ 
ing the sibyl gave a long and intricate narration, 
beginning with the presence on board of her hus¬ 
band’s whale-ship of a mystic } 7 outh with the man¬ 
ners and bearing of Porphyrogenitus, and the rating 
of a common sailor; the delicate suggestion of a 
disguised lady was also dimly introduced. What 
succeeds is yet more wonderful, as Scheherezade 
always said when obliged to cut short the story that 
the Sultan might get up and say his prayers; but we 
will not evade Mrs. McCleve’s copyright by telling 
it, simply advising everyone to go and listen to it. 

“ Two, four, six, eight, ten—elev-en ! ” counted 
she at the end, picking up the napkin-rings; “ I 
don’t seem to see that twelfth ring!” and she looked 
hard at the unfortunate that had acquired her dislike 
in the first of the interview by an unfeeling allusion 
to money. 

“ Here it is, Aunty,” remarked the senor. “ I 
wanted to hear you ask after it.” 

“ Now, look at here, Sammy, you’re too old for 



* Copyright, Jas. R. Osgood. 















250 


JANE GOODWIN AUSTIN. 


such tricks,” exposulated the dame, in precisely the 
tone one admonishes a child; and then turning to the 
company generally she added confidentially: 

“ I ain’t one of them that’s given to suspicion, and 
it ain’t a Nantucket failing; but last summer there 
was a boy, one of those half-grown critters, you 
know, neither beef nor veal, and I just saw him 
pocket—well, it was that very knife-handle. I 
always kept an eye on it since, thinking it might be 
oft' yet. So I waited till I saw he actooally meant it, 
and was fixing to go off with it, and then says I: 

“‘Well, sonny, going to unload before you start 
out on a new v’yge ? ’ So that's all about the carv¬ 
ings ; and these are shark’s teeth,—none of your 
Wauwinet sand-sharks that would run away from a 
puppy-dog no bigger than that, but a reg’lar man- 
eater off the West Indies; and these very teeth took 
a man’s leg oft’.’’ 

“ Horrible ! ” cried one, while another, one of the 
persistent souls who must finish A before they begin 
B, inquired: “ But did the boy give up the knife- 
handle ? ” 

“ Why, of course he did, my dear, since that’s it,” 
replied the hostess compassionately; and then, with 
the inborn courtesy peculiar to Nantucket folk, turned 
aside the laugh that followed by hastily displaying 
some new marvel. The room was crowded with marine 
curiosities, many of them brought home by the 
deceased captain, many of them presented to his 
relict by his comrades or by her own friends; they 
were mostly such as we have seen many times in 
many places, but some few were sui generis , such as 
a marriage contract between a Quaker bachelor and 
maid in the early days of the island, with the signa¬ 
tures of half the settlers appended as witnesses, 
mutual consent before others being the only ceremony 
required by the canon of these Non-sacramentarians. 
Then there was Phoebe Ann’s comb, a wonderful 
work of art in tortoise shell, anent which the posses¬ 
sor, Phoebe Ann’s sister, delivered a short original 
poem, setting forth how ardently Phoebe Ann had 
desired one of these immense combs, their price being 
eight dollars each ; and how, having engaged it, she 
set to work to earn it by picking berries for sale; but 
before the pence had grown to the pounds the big 
comb was out of fashion, and poor Phoebe Ann’s hair, 
which had been wonderfully luxuriant, fell off through 


illness, and what remained was cut short. Nantucket 
probity would not, however, be off its bargain for 
such cause as this; and Phoebe Ann paid her money 
and took her ornamental comb,—more useful in its 
present connection, perhaps, than it could have been 
in any other. The crown and glory of Mrs. McCleve’s 
museum, however, is a carved wooden vase, twelve or 
fourteen inches in height, made from the top of one 
of the red-cedar posts planted a century or two since 
by this lady’s ancestor, to inclose a certain parcel of 
land belonging to him. Twenty or thirty years ago 
the fence was to be renewed, and one of her cousins 
proposed to her to drive out to the place and secure 
a relic of the original island cedar now extinct. She 
accepted; and the section of the post, sawed off with 
great exertion by the cousin, was turned and carved 
into its present shape in “ Cousin Beuben Macy’s 
shop on Orange Street.” 

But all this set forth in an original poem delivered 
with much unction by its author, who decisively 
refuses a copy to any and everybody, and is even 
chary of letting any one listen to it more than once. 
It is original—in fact, one may say, intensely original 
—and quite as well worth listening to as the saga of 
a royal skald. It begins after this fashion : 

“This vase, of which w r e have in contemplation, 
Merits, my friends, } T our careful observation. 
******** 

Saturday, the busiest day of all, 

From Cousin Thomas I received a call.’' 

Some lost couplets record the invitation to drive, 
and the demur on account of pies then baking in the 
oven; but this being overruled by masculine persua¬ 
siveness— 

“Across the hall I gayly skipped, 

And soon w r as for the cruise equipped.” 

Then follows the drive, the arrival, and the attempt 
to cut the stern old cedar trunk with a dull saw,— 

“Cousin Thomas worked with desperation, 

Until he was in a profuse perspiration,” 

and finally secured the trophy here exhibited. But 
these stray couplets give a very inadequate idea of 
the poem as delivered by its author; and he who 









JANE GOODWIN AUSTIN. 


251 


visits Nantucket and does not hear it has for the i 
rest of his life a lost opportunity to lament. 

Just at the close of the recital the poetess fixed her 
eye steadily upon a figure beside one of the windows, 
and sternly inquired: 

“ Is that woman sick ? Why don’t somebody see 
to her?” 

It was true that the culprit, overcome by the heat | 
of the room, the excitement of the narrative, and 
possibly certain ancient and fish-like odors connected 
with the marine specimens, had fainted a little ; but 
was speedily recovered by the usual remedies, promi¬ 
nent among which in those days is a disinclination to 
have one’s crimps spoiled by the application of water ; 
and the incident was made more memorable by the 
valedictory of the hostess : 

“ Now, if any of you want to come in again while 
you stay on the island you can, without paying any¬ 
thing ; and if I don’t remember you, just say, ‘ I was 
here the day the woman fainted,’ and I shall know 
it’s all right.” And we heard that the experiment 
was tried and succeeded. 

As the party left the house the senor lingered to 
say: 11 We are going up to the old windmill, Aunty. 
Didn’t it belong to your family once?” 

“I should say it did, Sammy. They wanted a 
windmill and didn’t know how to make one: and 
they got an off-islander, name of Wilbur, to make it, 
and like fools gave him the money beforehand. He 
went back to the continent for something—nails may¬ 
be, or maybe idees—and carried the money with him; 
some pirate or other got wind of it, and the first 
thing they knew down here, the man was robbed and 
murdered there on Cape Cod. That didn’t put up 
the windmill though, and the women had got almost 
tired grinding their samp and meal in those old stone 


mortars, or even a handmill; so some of the folks 
spoke to my grandfather, Elisha Macy, about it, and 
he thought it over, and finally went to bed and dreamed 
just how to build it, and the next day got up and 
built it. That’s the story of that , my dear.” 

“A regular case of revelation, wasn’t it?” sug¬ 
gested the sehor with a twinkle in his eye; to which 
the hostess rather sharply replied: 

“ I don’t profess to know much about revealation, 
and 1 don’t surmise you know much more, Sammy ; 
but that’s how the windmill was built.” 

History adds another anecdote of the windmill, 
worthy to be preserved for its Nantucket flavor. 
Eighty-two years from its marvelous inception, the 
mill had grown so old and infirm that its owners con¬ 
cluded to sell it for lumber if need be. A meeting 
w r as called, and Jared Gardner, the man who was 
supposed to be wisest in mills of any on the island, 
was invited to attend, and succinctly asked by Syl- 
vanus Macy— 

“ Jared, what will thee give for the mill without 
the stones ? ’’ 

“ Not one penny, Sylvanus,” replied Jared as suc¬ 
cinctly ; and the other— 

“ What will thee give for it as it stands, Jared ? ” 

“ I don’t feel to want it at any price, friend,” 
replied Jared indifferently. 

The mill-owners consulted, and presently returned 
to the charge with— 

“ Jared, thee must make us an offer.” 

“ Well, then, twenty dollars for firewood, Syl¬ 
vanus.” 

The offer was accepted immediately; the shrewd 
Jared did not burn his mill, even to roast a suckling 
pig; but repaired and used it to his own and his 
neighbor’s advantage, until the day of his death. 




u 



LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY. 


PIONEER FEMALE POET OF AMERICA. 



RS. SIGOURNEY, was among the first, and is the most voluminous 
of all the early female poets of America. In fact she has been, up 
to this date, one of the most prolific of all the women writers of our 
country, having published fifty-six volumes of poetry and prose, the 
first appearing in 1815, and the last in 1863, fifty-eight years later. 
Her most successful efforts are her occasional poems, which abound 
in passages of earnest, well expressed thought, and exhibit in their graver moods 
characteristics of a mind trained by exercise in self-knowledge and self-control. 
Her writings possess energy and variety, while her wide and earnest sympathy with 
all topics of friendship and philanthropy was always at the service of those interests. 
Mr. Edward H. Everett in a review of Mrs. Sigourney’s works declared : “ They 

express with great purity and evident sincerity the tender affections which are so 
natural to the female heart and the lofty aspirations after a higher and better state 
of being which constitute the truly ennobling and elevating principles in art as well 
as in nature. Love and religion are the unvarying elements of her song. If her 
power of expression were equal to the purity and elevation of her habits of thought 
and feeling, she would be a female Milton or a Christian Pindar.” Continuing he 
says : “ Though she does not inherit 


‘ The force and ample pinion that the Theban eagles hear, 

Sailing with supreme dominion through the liquid vaults of air,’ 

she nevertheless manages language with an ease and elegance and that refined 
felicity of expression, which is the principal charm in poetry. In blank verse she 
is very successful. The poems that she has written in this measure have much of 
the manner of Wordsworth, and may be nearly or quite as highly relished by his 
admirers.” 

To the above eminent critical estimate of Mrs. Sigourney’s writings it is unneces¬ 
sary to add further comment. The justice of the praise bestowed upon her is 
evinced by the fact that she has acquired a wider and more pervading reputation 
than many of her more modern sisters in the realm of poesy, but it is evident that, of 
late years, her poetry has not enjoyed the popular favor which it had prior to 1860. 

Lydia Huntley was the only child of her parents, and was born at Norwich, 
Connecticut, September 1st, 1791. Her father was a man of worth and benevolence 
and had served in the revolutionary struggle which brought about the independence 

252 



































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WOMEN POETS OF AMERICA 



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LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY. 


253 


of America. Of the precocity of the child Duyckinck says: “She could read 
fluently at the age of three and composed simple verses at seven, smooth in rhythm 
and of an invariable religious sentiment^ Her girlhood life was quiet and unevent¬ 
ful.. She received the best educational advantages which her neighborhood and the 
society of Madam Lathrop, the widow of Dr. Daniel Lathrop, of Hartford, could 
bestow. In 1814, when twenty-three years of age, Miss Huntley was induced to 
take a select school at Hartford, and removed to that city, where the next year, in 
1815, her first book, “ Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse,” was published. The 
prose essays are introduced by the remark: “They are addressed to a number of 
young ladies under my care,” and the writer throughout the volume seems to have 
had her vocation as a teacher in view. In the summer of 1819 Miss Huntley be¬ 
came the wife of Mr. Charles Sigourney, an educated gentleman and a merchant 
of Hartford. In 1822 a historical poem in five cantos, entitled “Traits of the 
Aborigines,” was published, and about the same time a London publisher made a 
miscellaneous collection of her verses and published them under the title of “Lays 
from the West,” a compliment of no small moment to an American poetess. Sub¬ 
sequent volumes came in rapid succession, among them being “Sketch of Con¬ 
necticut Forty Years Since,” “Letters to Young Ladies” and “Letters to Mothers,” 
“ Poetry for Children,” “ Zinzendorf and Other Poems,” the last named appearing 
in 1836. It introduces us to the beautiful valley of Wyoming, paying an eloquent 
tribute to its scenery and historic fame, and especially to the missionary Zinzendorf, 
a noble self-sacrificing missionary among the Indians of the Wyoming Valley. Tlie 
picture is a very vivid one. The poem closes with the departure of Zinzendorf 
from the then infant city of Philadelphia, extols him for his missionary labor, and 
utters a stirring exhortation to Christian union. In 1841 “Pocahontas and Other 
Poems ” was issued by a New York publisher. Pocahontas is one of her longest 
and most successful productions, containing fifty-six stanzas of nine lines each, 
oj^ening with a picture of the vague and shadowy repose of nature as her imagina¬ 
tion conceived it in the condition of the new world prior to its discovery. The 
landing at Jamestown and the subsequent events that go to make up the thrilling story 
of Pocahontas follow in detail. This is said to be the best of the many poetical 
compositions of which the famous daughter of Powhatan has been the subject. 

In 1840 Mrs. Sigourney made a tour of Europe, and on her return in 1842 pub¬ 
lished a volume of recollections in prose and poetry of famous and picturesque 
scenes and hospitalities received. The title of the book was “Pleasant Memories 
of Pleasant Lands.” During her stay in Europe there were also published two 
volumes of her works in London, and tokens of kindness and esteem greeted the 
author from various distinguished sources. Among others was a splendid diamond 
bracelet from the Queen of France. Other volumes of her works appeared in 1846 
and 1848. Prominent among the last works of her life was “The Faded Hope,” a 
touching and beautiful memento of her severe bereavment in the death of her only 
son, which occurred in 1850. “Past Meridian” is also a graceful volume of prose 
sketches. 

Mrs. Sigourney died at Hartford, Connecticut, June 10, 1865, when seventy-three 
years of age. 

J o 



254 


LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY. 


COLUMBUS. 


T. STEPHEN’S cloistered hall was proud 
In learning’s pomp that day, 

For there a robed and stately crowd 
Pressed on in long array. 

A mariner with simple chart 
Confronts that conclave high, 

While strong ambition stirs his heart, 

And burning thoughts of wonder part 
From lips and sparkling eye. 



Courage, thou Genoese ! Old Time 
Thy splendid dream shall crown, 

Yon Western Hemisphere sublime, 
Where unshorn forests frown, 

The awful Andes’ cloud-wrapt brow, 

The Indian hunter’s bow, 

Bold streams untamed by helm or prow, 
And rocks of gold and diamonds, thou 
To thankless Spain slialt show. 


What hath he said ? With frowning face, 
In whispered tones they speak, 

And lines upon their tablets trace, 

Which flush each ashen cheek; 

The Inquisition’s mystic doom 
Sits on their brows severe, 

And bursting forth in visioned gloom, 

Sad heresy from burning tomb 
Groans on the startled ear. 


Courage, World-finder ! Thou hast need ! 

In Fates’ unfolding scroll, 

Dark woes, and ingrate w T rongs I read, 
That rack the noble soul. 

On ! on ! Creation’s secrets probe, 

Then drink thy cup of scorn, 

And wrapped in Caesar’s robe, 

Sleep like that master of the globe, 

All glorious,—yet forlorn. 


-♦O* 


THE ALPINE FLOWERS. 


EEK dwellers mid yon terror stricken cliffs ! 
With brows so pure, and incense breathing 
lips, 

Whence are ye ? Did some white winged 
messenger 

On Mercy’s missions trust your timid germ 
To the cold cradle of eternal snows ? 

Or, breathing on the callous icicles, 

Did them with tear drops nurse ye ?— 



—Tree nor shrub 

Dare that drear atmosphere ; no polar pine 
Uprears a veteran front; yet there ye stand, 

Leaning your cheeks against the thick ribbed ice, 


And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him 


Who bids you bloom unblanched amid the waste 
Of desolation. Man, who, panting, toils 
O’er slippery steeps, or, trembling, treads the verge 
Of yawning gulfs, o’er which the headlong plunge 
Is to eternity, looks shuddering up, 

And marks ye in your placid loveliness— 

Fearless, yet frail—and, clasping his chill hands, 
Blesses your pencilled beauty. Mid the pomp 
Of mountain summits rushing on the sky, 

And chaining the rapt soul in breathless awe, 

He bows to bind you drooping to his breast, 
Inhales your spirit from the frost winged gale 
And freer dreams of heaven. 


-K>* 


NIAGARA. 




LOW on, for ever, in thy glorious robe 
Of terror and of beauty. Yea, flow on 
Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set 
His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud 
Mantled around thy feet. And he doth give 
Thy voice of thunder power to speak of him 
Eternally—bidding the lip of man 
Keep silence—and upon thy rocky altar pour 
Incense of awe struck praise. Ah ! who can dare 
To lift the insect trump of earthly hope, 


Or love, or sorrow, mid the peal sublime 
Of thy tremendous hymn ? Even Ocean shrinks 
Back from thy brotherhood : and all his waves 
Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem 
To sleep like a spent laborer, and recall 
His wearied billows from their vexing play, 

And lull them to a cradle calm : but thou, 

With everlasting, undecaying tide, 

Dost rest not, night or day. The morning stars, 
When first they sang o’er young Creation’s birth, 





















LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY. 


255 


Heard thy deep anthem ; and those wrecking fires, 
That wait the archangel’s signal to dissolve 
This solid earth, shall find Jehovah’s name 
Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears, 

Of thine unending volume. Every leaf, 

That lifts itself within thy wide domain, 

Doth gather greenness from thy living spray, 

Yet tremble at the baptism. Lo ! yon birds 
Do boldly venture near, and bathe their wing 
Amid thy mist and foam. ’Tis meet for them 
To touch thy garment’s hem, and lightly stir 
The snowy leaflets of thy vapor wreath, 

For they may sport unharmed amid the cloud, 

Or listen at the echoing gate of heaven, 


Without reproof. But as for us, it seems 
Scarce lawful, with our broken tones, to speak 
Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint 
Thy glorious features with our pencil’s point, 
Or woo thee to the tablet of a song, 

Were profanation. Thou dost make the soul 
A wondering witness of thy majesty, 

But as it presses with delirious joy 
To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step, 
And tame its rapture, with the humbling view 
Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand 
In the dread presence of the Invisible, 

As if to answer to its God through thee. 


-+O* 


DEATH OF AN INFANT. 


E ATH found strange beauty on that polished 
brow 

And dashed it out. There was a tint of 
rose 

On cheek and lip. He touched the veins with ice 
And the rose faded. Forth from those blue eyes 
There spake a wishful tenderness, a doubt 
Whether to grieve or sleep, which innocence 
Alone may wear. With ruthless haste he bound 


The silken fringes of those curtaining lids 
Forever. There had been a murmuring sound 
With which the babe would claim its mother’s ear, 
Charming her even to tears. The Spoiler set 
His seal of silence. But there beamed a smile 
So fixed, so holy, from that cherub brow. 

Death gazed, and left it there. He dared not steal 
The signet ring of heaven. 



o 


A BUTTERFLY ON A CHILD’S GRAVE. 


BUTTERFLY basked on a baby’s grave, 
Where a lily had chanced to grow ; 

“ Why art thou here, with thy gaudy dye, 
When she of the blue and sparkling eye 
Must sleep in the churchyard low ?” 



Then it lightly soared through the sunny air, 

And spoke from its shining track : 

“ I was a worm till I won my wings, 

And she whom thou mourn’st like a seraph sings, 
Wouldst thou call the blest one back ?” 

















ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 


AUTHOR, OF “ THE SINLESS CHILD.” 

T was in the year 1841 that a poetic Romance of several episodes, 
written in ballad style and entitled “ The Sinless Child,” was pub¬ 
lished in the Southern Literary Messenger and brought its author, a 
woman of thirty-five years, into general prominence, and gained for 
her an enviable position which she ever after maintained and forti¬ 
fied with a series of the finest sonnets which the literature of our 
country affords. “Her productions,” says Beade, “are characterized rather by a 
passionate and lofty imagination, than by fancy, and a subtle vein of philosophy 
more than sentiment, though in the latter she is by no means deficient.” 

The maiden name of this lady was Prince. . She is descended from old Puritan 
stock on both sides, and was born in Cumberland, near Portland, Maine, on the 
twelfth day of August, 1806. At an early age Miss Prince was married to Mr. 
Seba Smith, a newspaper editor whom she assisted in his editorial work. Mr. 
Smith, himself, was a man of considerable literary attainment, who, under the nom 
de 'plume of “ Jack Downing,” obtained a national reputation. He is also the 
author of “ Powhattan ; a metrical romance,” and several shorter poems which 
appeared in the periodicals of the day. His magazine tales and essays were col¬ 
lected in 1850 and published under the title of “ Down East.” 

Like most young women writers of that day, Mrs. Smith contributed her early 
productions to various periodicals, anonymously. It was not until her husband 
suffered business disaster that she commenced the open profession of authorship as a 
means of support for her family. Her first published work “ Riches Without 
Wings” appeared in 1838; “The Sinless Child and other poems” was collected 
and issued in book form in New York, in 1841. In 1842, Mrs. Smith and her 
husband removed to New York where they have afterwards resided and the same 
year she published a novel entitled “The Western Captive” and also a fanciful 
prose tale “ The Salamander; a Legend for Christmas.” 

Mrs. Smith is also the author of “ The Roman Tribute, a tragedy in five acts,” 
founded on the exemption of Constantinople from destruction by a tribute paid by 
Theodosius to the conquering general, Attila. She is also the author of a tragedy 
entitled “ Jacob Leisler,” which is founded upon a well known dramatic incident 
of the colonial history of New York. Both of these plays enjoyed in their day 
popular favor upon the stage. In 1847, she published “ Woman and her needs,” 
and in 1852, “ Hints on Dress and Beauty.” Subsequent to these came “ The Bald 

256 











































ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 


257 


Joy ; ” “ Sagamor of Saco ; ” 
Destiny, a Tragedy.” 

Besides the above volumes, Mrs. Smith was the author of much fugitive verse 
and was also a liberal contributor of the current magazines of her day. The 
varied and peculiar merits of this author will appear to the reader of her writings, 
who must be impressed that in the drama, in the sonnet and in miscellaneous poems 
of imagination and fancy, she has vindicated her right to a place among the first 
poets of her sex, while her prose writings, though not largely read at this time, are 
characterized by the same subtle insight, analysis and delicacy of treatment which 
mark her poetry. 

-Kx- 


Eagle ; or the last of the Bamapauglis ; ” “ The News I 
“ The Two Wives ; ” “ Kitty Howard’s Journal,” and “ 


EXTRACTS FROM “THE SINLESS CHILD.” 


It is difficult to select from a poem of which the parts make one harmonious whole ; but the history of 
“The Sinless Child ” is illustrated all through with panel pictures which are scarcely less effective when sep¬ 
arated from their series than when combined, and the reader will be gratified with a few of those which 
serve to exhibit the author’s graceful play of fancy, and the pure vein of poetic sentiment as well as her 
manner and style in treating this masterpiece of its author. 


THE STEP-MOTHER 

OU speak of Hobert’s second wife, 

A lofty dame and bold : 

I like not her forbidding air, 

And forehead high and cold. 

The orphans have no cause for grief, 

She dare not give it now, 

Though nothing but a ghostly fear 
Her heart of pride could bow. 



(FROM “ THE SINLESS CHILD.”) 

What boots it that no other eye 
Beheld the shade appear? 

The guilty lady's guilty soul 
Beheld it plain and clear ! 

It slowly glides within the room, 

And sadly looks around— 

And stooping, kissed her daughter’s cheek 
With lips that gave no sound ! 


One night the boy his mother called: 

They heard him weeping say— 

“ Sweet mother, kiss poor Eddy’s cheek, 
And wipe his tears away !” 

Red grew the lady’s brow with rage, 
And yet she feels a strife 
Of anger and of terror too, 

At thought of that dead wife. 


Then softly on the stepdame’s arm 
She laid a death-cold hand, 

Yet it hath scorched within the flesh 
Like to a burning brand ; 

And gliding on with noiseless foot, 
O’er winding stair and hall, 

She nears the chamber where is heard 
Her infant’s trembling call. 


Wild roars the wind, the lights burn blue, 
The watch-dog howls with fear ; 

Loud neighs the steed from out the stall: 

What from is gliding near ? 

No latch is raised, no step is heard, 

But a phantom fills the space— 

A sheeted spectre from the dead, 

With cold and leaden face ! 


She smoothed the pillow where he lay, 
She warmly tucked the bed, 

She wiped his tears, and stroked the curls 
That clustered round his head. 

The child, caressed, unknowing fear, 
Hath nestled him to rest; 

The mother folds her wings beside— 
The mother from the blest! 


GUARDIAN ANGELS. 

ITH downy pinion they enfold 

The heart surcharged with wo, 

And fan with balmy wing the eye 
Whence floods of sorrow flow ; 

They bear, in golden censers up, 

That sacred gift a tear— 

By which is registered the griefs 
Hearts may have suffered here. 

17 



(FROM “ THE SINLESS CHILD.”) 

No inward pang, no yearning love 
Is lost to human hearts— 

No anguish that the spirit feels, 
When bright-winged Hope departs. 
Though in the mystery of life 
Discordant powers prevail; 

That life itself be weariness, 

And sympathy may fail: 

















258 


ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 


Yet all becomes a discipline, 

To lure us to the sky; 

And angels bear the good it brings 
With fostering care on high. 

Though human hearts may weary grow, 
And sink to toil-spent sleep, 

And we are left in solitude 
And agony to weep: 


Yet they with ministering zeal 
The cup of healing bring, 

And bear our love and gratitude 
Away, on heavenward wing; 

And thus the inner life is wrought, 
The blending earth and heaven— 
The love more earnest in its glow 
Where much has been forgiven ! 


►<>♦- 


THE BROOK. 


3R away, thou merry Brook, 
hither away so fast, 
dainty feet through the meadow 
green, 

And a smile as you hurry past ? ” 

The Brook leaped on in idle mirth, 

And dimpled with saucy glee; 

The daisy kissed in lovingness, 

And made with the willow free. 

I heard its laugh adow T n the glen, 

And over the rocky steep, 

Away where the old tree's roots were bare 
In the waters dark and deep; 

The sunshine flashed upon its face, 

And played with flickering leaf— 

Well pleased to dally in its path, 

Though the tarrying were brief. 

“ Now stay thy feet, oh restless one, 

Where droops the spreading tree, 

And let thy liquid voice reveal 
Thv story unto me.” 

The flashing pebbles lightly rung, 

As the gushing music fell, 

The chiming music of the brook, 

From out the woody dell. 

“ My mountain home was bleak and high, 

A rugged spot and drear, 

With searching wind and raging storm, 

And moonlight cold and clear. 

I longed for a greeting cheery as mine, 

For a fond and answering look 
But none were in that solitude 
To bless the little brook. 

“ The blended hum of pleasant sounds 
Came up from the vale below, 

And I wished that mine were a lowly lot, 

To lapse, and sing as I go; 

That gentle things, with loving eyes, 

Along my path should glide, 

And blossoms in their loveliness 
Come nestling to my side. 


“ I leaped me down: my rainbow robe 
Hung shivering to the sight, 

And the thrill of freedom gave to me 
New impulse of delight. 

A joyous welcome the sunshine gave, 

The bird and the swaying tree; 

The spear-like grass and blossoms start 
With joy at sight of me. 

“ The swallow comes with its bit of clay, 
When the busy Spring is here. 

And twittering bears the moistened gift 
A nest on the eaves to rear ; 

The twinkling feet of flock and herd 
Have trodden a path to me, 

And the fox and the squirrel come to drink 
In the shade of the alder-tree. 

“ The sunburnt child, with its rounded foot, 
Comes hither with me to play, 

And I feel the thrill of his lightsome heart 
As he dashes the merry spray. 

I turn the mill with answering glee, 

As the merry spokes go round, 

And the gray rock takes the echo up, 
Rejoicing in the sound. 

“ The old man bathes his scattered locks, 
And drops me a silent tear— 

For he sees a wrinkled, careworn face 
Look up from the waters clear. 

Then I sing in his ear the very song 
He heard in years gone b} r ; 

The old man’s heart is glad again, 

And a joy lights up his eye.” 

Enough, enough, thou homily brook ! 

I'll treasure thy teachings w T ell, 

And I will yield a heartfelt tear 
Thy crystal drops to swell; 

Will bear like thee a kindly love 
For the lowly things of earth, 
Remembering still that high and pure 
Is the home of the spirit’s birth. 










ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 


259 


THE APRIL RAIN. 


HE April rain—the April rain— 

I hear the pleasant sound ; 

Now soft and still, like little dew, 
Now drenching all the ground. 
Pray tell me why an April shower 
Is pleasanter to see 
Than falling drops of other rain ? 
I’m sure it is to me. 

I wonder if ’tis really so— 

Or only hope the while, 

That tells of swelling buds and flowers, 
And Summer’s coming smile. 

Whate'er it is, the April shower 
Makes me a child again ; 

I feel a rush of youthful blood 
Come with the April rain. 

And sure, were I a little bulb 
Within the darksome ground, 

I should love to hear the April rain 
So gently falling round ; 

Or any tiny flower were I, 

By Nature swaddled up, 

How pleasantly the April shower 
Would bathe my hidden cup ! 

The small brown seed, that rattled down 
On the cold autumnal earth, 

Is bursting from its cerements forth, 
Rejoicing in its birth. 


The slender spears of pale green grass 
Are smiling in the light, 

The clover opes its folded leaves 
As if it felt delight. 

The robin sings on the leafless tree, 

And upward turns his eye, 

As loving much to see the drops 
Come filtering from the sky ; 

No doubt he longs the bright green leaves 
About his home to see, 

And feel the swaying summer winds 
Play in the full-robed tree. 

The cottage door is open wide, 

And cheerful sounds are heard, 

The young girl sings at the merry wheel 
.A song like the wilding bird ; 

The creeping child by the old, worn sill 
Peers out with winking eye, 

And his ringlets rubs with chubby hand, 
As the drops come pattering by. 

With bounding heart beneath the sky, 
The truant boy is out, 

And hoop and ball are darting by 
With many a merry shout. 

Ay, sport away, ye joyous throng— 

For yours is the April day ; 

I love to see your spirits dance 
In your pure and healthful play. 





FLOWERS. 



(FROM “ THE 

ACH tiny leaf became a scroll 
Inscribed with holy truth, 

A lesson that around the heart 
Should keep the dew of youth ; 
Bright missals from angelic throngs 
In every by-way left— 

How were the earth of glory shorn, 
Were it of flowers bereft! 


SINLESS CHILD.”) 

They tremble on the Alpine height; 

The fissured rock they press; 

The desert wild, with heat and sand, 
Shares, too, their blessedness : 

And wheresoe’er the weary heart 
Turns in its dim despair, 

The meek-eyed blossom upward looks, 
Inviting it to prayer. 




EROS AND ANTEROS. 



said sweet Psyche gazed one night 
On Cupid’s sleeping face— 

Gazed in her fondness on the wight 
Tn his unstudied grace: 

But he, bewildered by the glare 
()f light at such a time, 

Fled from the side of Psyche there 
As from a thing of crime. 


Ay, weak the fable—false the ground— 
Sweet Psyche veiled her face— 

Well knowing Love, if ever found, 

Will never leave his place. 

Unfound as yet, and weary grown, 

She had mistook another: 

’Twas but Love’s semblance she had found—* 
Not Eros, but his brother ! 


I 

























LUCY LAKCOM. 

AUTHOR OF “HANNAH BINDING SHOES.” 

AD we visited tlie cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, sixty years 

/ * %j %j 

ago, we perhaps would not have noticed anything peculiar or differ¬ 
ent from other girls in the busy little body known as Lucy Larcom. 
She had left school in her early teens to help support the family by 
serving as an ordinary operative in a cotton factory. A r et this is 
where Lucy Larcom did her first work; and to the experiences she 
gained there can be traced the foundation of the literature—both prose and poetry 
—with which she has delighted and encouraged so many readers. 

Lucy Larcom was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1826. Her father, a sea 
captain, died while she was a child, and her mother removed with her several chil¬ 
dren to Lowell, Massachusetts. For a while Lucy attended the public schools and 
at the age of ten years showed a talent for writing verses. In the cotton mill, she 
tells us, her first work was “doffing and replacing the bobbins in the machine. 
Next,” she says, “I entered the spinning-room, then the dressing-room, where I had 
a place beside pleasant windows looking toward the river. Later I was promoted 
to the cloth-room, where I had fewer hours of confinement, without the noisy 
machinery, and it was altogether neater.” The last two years, of her eight years’ work 
in the mill, she served as book-keeper, and, during her leisure hours, pursued her 
studies in mathematics, grammar and English and German literature. 

The female operatives in the Lowell mills published a little paper entitled 
“Offering,” and it was to this that Miss Larcom contributed her first literary pro¬ 
duction, which was in the shape of a poem entitled “The River;” and many of 
her verses and essays, both grave and gay, may be found in the old files of this 
paper. Her first volume, “Similitudes,” was compiled from essays which appeared 
originally in “Offering.” Since then her name has found an honored place among 
the women writers of America. Among her early and best poems are “Hannah 
Binding Shoes” and “The Rose Enthroned,” the latter being Miss Larcom’s first 
contribution to the “Atlantic Monthly.” She did not sign her name to the contri¬ 
bution and it was of such merit that one of the reviewers attributed it to the poet 
Emerson. Both Mr. Lowell, the editor of “The Atlantic Monthly,” and the poet, 
Whittier, to whose papers she also contributed, praised her ability. Miss Larconi 
studied at Monticello Female Seminary, Illinois, and afterwards taught in some of 
the leading female schools in her native State. In 1859 appeared her book entitled 
“Ships in the Mist and Other Stories,” and in 1866 was published “Breathings of 

260 






























LUCY LAECOM. 


261 


a Better Life.” From 1866 to 1874 she was editor of “Oar Young Folks,” and in 
1875 “An Idyl of Work, a Story in Verse,” appeared. In 1880 “Wild Boses of 
Cape Ann and Other Poems” was published, and in 1881 “Among Lowell Mill 
Girls” appeared. In 1885 her poetical works were gathered and published in one 
volume. Of late, Miss Larcom’s writings have assumed deeply religious tones in 
which the faith of her whole life finds ample expression. This characteristic is 
strongly noticeable in “Beckonings” (1886), and especially so in her last two books 
“As It Is In Heaven” (1891) and “The Unseen Friend” (1892), both of which 
embody her maturest thought on matters concerning the spiritual life. 

One of the most admirable characteristics of Miss Larcom’s life and her writings; 
is the marked spirit of philanthropy pervading every thing she did. She was in 
sentiment and practically the working woman’s friend. She came from among them,, 
had shared their toils, and the burning and consuming impulse of her life was to^ 
better their condition. In this, she imitated the spirit of Him, who, being lifted up, 
would draw all men after Him. 


■♦o*- 


HANNAH BINDING SHOES. 



OOR lone Hannah, 

Sitting at the window, binding shoes! 
Faded, wrinkled, 

Sitting stitching, in a mournful muse ! 
Bright-eyed beauty once was she, 
When the bloom was on the tree: 
Spring and winter 

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes. 


May is passing: 

Mid the apple-boughs a pigeon coos. 
Hannah shudders, 

For the mild south-wester mischief brews. 
Round the rocks of Marblehead, 
Outward bound, a schooner sped : 
Silent, lonesome, 

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes. 


Not a neighbor 

Passing nod or answer will refuse 
To her whisper, 

“ Is there from the fishers any news?” 
Oh, her heart’s adrift with one 
On an endless voyage gone ! 

Night and morning 

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes. 


’Tis November. 

Now no tears her wasted cheek bedews. 

From Newfoundland 
Not a sail returning will she lose, 
Whispering hoarsely, “ Fisherman, 
Have you, have you heard of Ben ? ” 
Old with watching, 

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes. 


Fair young Hannah 
Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gayly woos; 
Hale and clever, 

For a willing heart and hand he sues. 
May-day skies are all aglow, 

And the waves are laughing so! 

For the wedding 

Hannah leaves her window and her shoes. 


Twenty winters 

Bleach and tear the ragged shore she views. 

Twenty seasons;— 

Never has one brought her any news. 

Still her dim eyes silently 
Chase the white sail o’er the sea: 
Hopeless, faithless, 

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes. 













ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY. 

“ THE SISTER SPIRITS OF POESY.” 

would be difficult to treat the two poetic Cary sisters separately. 
Their work began, progressed through life and practically ended 
together. Few persons have written under the circumstances which 
at first appeared so disadvantageous. They had neither education 
nor literary friends, nor was their early lot cast in a region of literary 
culture—for they were reared in Cincinnati, Ohio, during the forma¬ 
tive period of that Western country. But surely in the wild hills and valleys of 
their native West, they found 

“ Tongues in trees, books in running brooks, 

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.” 

Alice Cary was born in Mount Healthy, near Cincinnati, April 20, 1820, and 
her sister Phoebe at the same place four years later. The two sisters studied at home 
together and, when eighteen years old, Alice began to write poems and sketches of 
rural life under the nom de plume of Patty Lee, which attracted considerable atten¬ 
tion and displayed an ability which elicited encouragement from the editors of the 
periodicals to which she contributed. In the mean time, Phoebe Cary, following her 
sister’s example, began to contribute, and, in 1850, the two sisters published their 
first volume of poems in Philadelphia. A volume of prose sketches entitled 
“Clover Nook, or Recollections of our Neighborhood in the West,” by Alice Cary 
followed in 1851. In 1852, the Cary sisters removed to New York city where they 
chiefly resided during the remainder of their lives, returning occasionally to their 
early farm home. For some years they held weekly receptions in New York, which 
were attended by leading artistic and literary people. They earned by their pens— 
pure and womanly pens—sufficient to provide a competence for all their wants. 
They gathered a library, rich in standard works, to gratify their refined tastes and 
did much to relieve the needy with their charity. In 1853, Alice Cary issued a 
second series of her “Clover Nook Papers” and a third gleaning from the same 
field appeared in 1855, entitled “Clover Nook Children,” for the benefit of her more 
youthful readers. During the prolific years, from 1852 to 1855, she also published 
“Lyra and other Poems,” followed by “Hagar, a Story of To-day,” “Married, Not 
Mated,” and “Hollywood,” a collection of poems. In 1854, Phoebe Cary, also, 
published “Poems and Parodies.” In 1859 appeared her “Pictures of Country 
Life,” a series of tales, and “The Bishop’s Son,” a novel. In 1867, appeared her 

262 





























ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY. 


263 


“Snowberries,” a book for young folks. In 1866, Alice also published a volume 
entitled “Ballads, Lyrics and Hymns,” which is a standard selection of her poetry 
and contains some of the sweetest minor poems in the language. Alice’s “The 
Lover’s Diary” appeared in 1868. It begins with the poem “Dreamland” and 
ranges with a series of exquisite lyrics of love through all the phases of courtship 
to married life. This was the last of her works published during her lifetime. 
During the same year (1868), Phoebe published the “Poems of Faith, Hope and 
Love,” a worthy companion volume to her sister’s works, and in 1869 she aided her 
pastor, Clias. F. Deems, in editing “Hymns for All Christians.” 

In comparing the two sisters, it is noticeable that the poems of Alice are more 
thoughtful and more melodiously expressed. They are also marked with a stronger 
originality and a more vivid imagination. In disposition, Alice was pensive and 
tender, while Phoebe was witty and gay. Alice was strong in energy and patience 
and bore the chief responsibility of their household, allowing her sister, who was 
less passive and feminine in temperament, to consult her moods in writing. The 
disparity in the actual intellectual productions of the two sisters in the same 
number of years is the result, not so much of the mental equality as of the superior 
energy, industry, and patience of the elder. 

The considerate love and delicacy with which Alice and Phoebe Cary treated 
each other plainly indicated that they were one in spirit through life, and in death 
they were not long separated. Alice died at her home in New York City, February 
12, 1871, in her fifty-first year. Phoebe, in sorrow over this bereavement, wrote 
the touching verses entitled “Light,” and in confidence said to a friend: “Alice, 
when she was here, always absorbed me, and she absorbs me still. I feel her con¬ 
stantly drawing me.” And so it seemed in reality, for, on the thirty-first day of 
July, six months after Alice Cary was laid to rest in Greenwood Cemetery, New 
York, Phoebe died at Newport, Bhode Island, whence her remains were removed 
and laid by her sister’s side. 

The two kindred sisters, so long associated on earth, were re-united. The 
influence they have left behind them, embalmed in their hymns of praiseful worship, 
their songs of love and of noblest sentiment, and their stories of happy childhood 
and innocent manhood and womanhood, will long remain to bless the earth and con¬ 
stitute a continual incense to their memory. 

Besides the published works named above, both Alice and Phoebe left at their 
death uncollected poems enough to give each name two added volumes. Alice also 
left the manuscript of a completed novel. 


264 


ALICE AND PHOEBE CAEY. 


PICTURES OF MEMORY, (alice cary.) 


MONGr the beautiful pictures 

That hang on Memory’s wall, 

Is one of a dim old forest, 

That seemeth best of all: 

Not for its gnarled oaks olden, 

Dark with the mistletoe; 

Not for the violets golden 

That sprinkle the vale below ; 

Not for the milk-white lilies, 

That lead from the fragrant hedge, 
Coqueting all day with the sunbeams, 

And stealing their golden edge ; 

Not for the vines on the upland 
Where the bright red berries rest, 

Nor the pinks, nor the pale, sweet cowslip, 
It seemed to me the best. 

I once had a little brother, 

With eyes that were dark and deep— 

In the lap of that old dim forest 
He lieth in peace asleep: 



Light as the down of the thistle, 

Free as the winds that blow, 

We roved there the beautiful summers, 
The summers of long ago ; 

But his feet on the hills grew weary, 
And, one of the autumn eves, 

I made for my little brother 
A bed of the yellow leaves. 

Sweetly his pale arms folded 
My neck in a meek embrace, 

As the light of immortal beauty 
Silently covered his face: 

And when the arrows of sunset 
Lodged in the tree-tops bright, 

He fell, in his saint-like beauty, 

Asleep by the gates of light. 
Therefore, of all the pictures 
That hang on Memory’s wall, 

The one of the dim old forest 
Seemeth the best of all. 


NOBILITY. (ALICE CARY.) 



ILDA is a lofty lady, 

Very proud is she— 

I am but a simple herdsman 
Dwelling by the sea. 

Hilda hath a spacious palace, 

Broad, and white, and high ; 
Twenty good dogs guard the portal- 
Never house had I. 


Hilda from her palace windows 
Looketh down on me, 

Keeping with my dove-brown oxen 
By the silver sea. 

When her dulcet harp she playeth, 
Wild birds singing nigh, 

cT 1 o o’ 

Cluster, listening, by her white hands— 
But my reed have I. 


Hilda hath a thousand meadows— 
Boundless forest lands: 

She hath men and maids for service— 

I have but my hands. 

The sweet summer’s ripest roses 
Hilda’s cheeks outvie— 

Queens have paled to see her beauty— 
But my beard have I. 


I am but a simple herdsman, 

With nor house nor lands; 

She hath men and maids for service— 
I have but my hands. 

And yet what are all her crimsons 
To my sunset sky— 

With my free hands and my manhood 
Hilda’s peer am I. 


-•O*- 


THE GRAY SWAN, (alice cary.) 


(From the Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary, 1876.) 



tell me, sailor, tell me true, 

Is my little lad, my Elihu, 
A-sailing with your ship ? ” 

The sailor’s eyes were dim with dew,— 
“ Your little lad, your Elihu ? ” 

He said with trembling lip,— 

“ What little lad ? what ship ? ” 


“ What little lad !• as if there could be 
Another such an one as he! 

What little lad, do you say ? 
Why, Elihu, that took to the sea 
The moment I put him olf my knee! 

It was just the other day 
The Gray Sivan sailed away.” 























ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY. 


265 


“ The other day ? ” the sailor’s eyes 
Stood open with a great surprise,— 

“ The other day ? the Swan ? ” 

His heart began in his throat to rise. 

“ Aye, aye, sir, here in the cupboard lies 
The jacket he had on.” 

“ And so your lad is gone ? ” 

a Gone with the Swan.” 11 And did she stand 
With her anchor clutching hold of the sand, 

For a month, and never stir ? ” 
u Why, to be sure ! I’ve seen from the land, 
Like a lover kissing his lady’s hand, 

The wild sea kissing her,— 

A sight to remember, sir.” 

“ But, my good mother, do you know 
All this was twenty years ago ? 

I stood on the Gray Swans deck, 

And to that lad I saw you throw, 

Taking it off, as it might be, so ! 

The kerchief from your neck.” 

“ Aye, and he’ll bring it back ! ” 

“ And did the little lawless lad, 

That has made you sick and made you sad, 

Sail with the Gray Swan's crew ? ” 

“ Lawless ! the man is going mad ! 


The best boy mother ever had,— 

Be sure he sailed with the crew ! 

What would you have him do? ” 

“ And he has never written a line, 

Nor sent you word, nor made you sign 
To say he was alive ! ” 
u Hold ! if ’twas wrong, the wrong is mine 
Besides, he may be in the brine, " 

And could he write from the grave? 
Tut, man, what would you have ? ” 

Gone twenty years—a long, long cruise,— 
’Twas wicked thus your love to abuse ; 

But if the lad still live, 

And come back home, think you can 
Forgive him ? ” “ Miserable man, 

You’re mad as the sea,—you rave,— 
What have I to forgive ? ” 

The sailor twitched his shirt so blue, 

And from within his bosom drew 
The kerchief. She was wild. 

“ My God ! my Father ! is it true ? 

My little lad, my Elihu ! 

My blessed boy, my child! 

My dead, my living child ! ” 


-•O 


TO THE EVENING ZEPHYR* 


ALICE CARY. 


SIT where the wild-bee is humming, 
And listen in vain for thy song; 
I’ve waited before for thy coming, 
But never, oh, never so long ! 
How oft with the blue sky above us, 

And waves breaking light on the shore, 
Thou, knowing they would not reprove us, 
Hast kissed me a thousand times o’er! 
Alone in the gathering shadows, 

Still waiting, sweet Zephyr, for thee, 



I look for the waves of the meadows, 
And dimples to dot the blue sea. 

The blossoms that waited to greet thee 
With heat of the noontide oppressed, 
Now flutter so light to meet thee, 

Thou’rt coming, I know, from the west. 
Alas ! if thou findest me pouting, 

’Tis only my love that alarms ; 

Forgive, then, I pray thee, my doubting, 
And take me once more to thine arms ! 




DEATH SCENE* 

(PHOEBE CARY.) 

When her soul from its prison fetters 
Was loosed by the hand of God. 

One moment her pale lips trembled 
With the triumph she might not tell, 
As the sight of the life immortal 

* Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 


YING, still slowly dying, 

As the hours of night rode by, 

She had lain since the light of sunset 
Was red on the evening sky ; 

Till after the middle watches, 

As we softly near her trod. 






















266 


ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY. 


On her spirit’s vision fell; 

Then the look of rapture faded, 

And the beautiful smile was faint, 
As that in some convent picture, 

On the face of a dying saint. 

And we felt in the lonesome midnight, 


As we sat by the silent dead, 

What a light on the path going downward 
The feet of the righteous shed ; 

When we thought how with faith unshrinkin 
She came to the Jordan’s tide, 

And taking the hand of the Saviour, 

Went up on the heavenly side. 


-K>«- 

MEMORIES* 

(PHOEBE CARY.) 

“ She loved me , but she left me." 


EMORIES on memories ! to my soul again 
There come such dreams of vanished 
love and bliss 

That my wrung heart, though long inured 
to pain, 

Sinks with the fulness of its wretchedness : 

Thou, dearer far than all the world beside ! 

Thou, who didst listen to my love’s first vow— 
Once I had fondly hoped to call thee bride: 

Is the dream over ? comes that awakening now ? 
And is this hour of wretchedness and tears 
The only guerdon for my wasted years ? 

And I did love thee—when by stealth we met 
In the sweet evenings of that summer time, 

Whose pleasant memory lingers with me yet, 

As the remembrance of a better clime 


Might haunt a fallen angel. And oh, thou— 
Thou who didst turn away and seek to bind 
Thy heart from breaking—thou hast felt ere now 
A heart like thine o’ermastereth the mind : 
Affection's power is stronger than thy will— 

Ah, thou didst love me, and thou lovest me still. 

My heart could never yet be taught to move 
With the calm even pulses that it should : 
Turning away from those that it should love, 

And loving whom it should not, it hath wooed 
Beauty forbidden—I may not forget; 

And thou, oh thou canst never cease to feel; 
But time, which hath not changed affection yet, 
Hath taught at least one lesson—to conceal; 
So none but thou, who see my smiles, shall know 
The silent bleeding of the heart below. 





“EQUAL TO EITHER FORTUNE.”* 

(PHOEBE CARY.) 


QUAL to either fortune!” This should be 
The motto of the perfect man and true— 
Striving to stem the billow fearlessly, 

And keeping steadily the right in view, 
Whether it be his lot in life to sail 
Before an adverse or a prosperous gale. 

Man fearlessly his voice for truth should raise, 

When truth would force its way in deed or word; 
Whether for him the popular voice of praise, 

Or the cold sneer of unbelief is heard : 

Like the First Martyr, when his voice arose 
Distinct above the hisses of his foes. 

“ Equal to either fortune,” Heaven designs, 

Whether his destiny be repose or toil— 

Whether the sun upon his palace shines, 


Or calls him forth to plant the furrowed soil: 

So shall he find life’s blessings freely strewn 
Around the peasant’s cottage as the throne. 

Man should dare all things which he knows are right, 
And fear to do no act save what is wrong; 

But, guided safely by his inward light, 

And with a permanent belief, and strong, 

In Him who is our Father and our friend, 

He should walk steadfastly unto the end. 

Ready to live or die, even in that day 

Which man from childhood has been taught to fear, 
When, putting off its cumbrous weight of clay, 

The spirit enters on a nobler sphere: 

And he will be, whose life was rightly passed, 

“ Equal to either fortune ” at the last. 



* Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
















ALICE AND PHOEBE CABY. 


267 


LIGHT* 


(PHOEBE CARY.) 

It was written after the death of her sister Alice, in 1871. 


This is one of the last poems. 

I hid mine eyes, I feared ; 
le heavens in wrath seemed bowed; 
)k, and the sun with a smile breaks 
forth, 

And a rainbow spans the cloud. 

I thought the winter was here, 

That the earth was cold and bare, 

But I feel the coming of birds and flowers, 

And the spring-time in the air. 

I said that all the lips 

I ever had kissed were dumb ; 

That my dearest ones w r ere dead and gone, 

And never a friend w r ould come. 

But I hear a voice as sweet 

As the fall of summer showers; 


And the grave that yawned at my very feet 
Is filled to the top with flowers! 

As if ’t were the midnight hour, 

I sat with gloom opprest; 

When a light was breaking out of the east 
And shining unto the west. 

I heard the angels call 

Across from the beautiful shore ; 

And I saw a look in my darling’s eyes, 

That never was there before. 

Transfigured, lost to me, 

She had slipped from my embrace; 

Now, lo ! I hold her fast once more, 

With the light of God on her face! 



Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 












LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 


O modern poet among American women stands higher in the estimation 
of her literary peers, or in the social scale than does the author of 
“ Bedtime Stories,” “ Some Women’s Hearts,” and “ In the Gar¬ 
den of Dreams.” Mrs. Moulton enjoys the triple distinction of 
being a writer of the most popular stories for children, of popular 
novels for grown people, and of some of the best poetry which any 
woman has contributed to our literature. In herself she presents the conscientious 
jDoet who writes for the purpose of instructing and benefiting, and, at the same time, 
one whose wares are marketable and popular. Not a few critics have placed her 
sonnets at the head of their kind in America. Her poetry has for its main charac¬ 
teristic a constant but not a rebellious sorrow expressed with such consistent ease and 
melody that the reader is led on with a most pleasurable sensation from stanza to 
stanza and arises from the reading of her verses with a mellower and softer sym¬ 
pathy for his fellow-beings. 

Louise Chandler was born at Pomfret, Connecticut, April 5, 1835, and her educa¬ 
tion was received in that vicinity. Her first book entitled “ This, That and Other 
Poems ” appeared when she was nineteen years of age. It was a girlish miscellany 
and sold remarkably well. After its publication, she passed one year in Miss Wil¬ 
lard’s Seminary at Troy, New York, and it was during her first vacation from this 
school that she met and married the well-known Boston journalist, William Moulton. 
The next year was published “ Juno Clifford,” a novel, without her name attached. 
Her next publication, issued in 1859, was a collection of stories under the title of 
“ My Third Book.” Neither of these made a great success, and she published 
nothing more until 1873, when her now famous “ Bedtime Stories for Children ” 
was issued and attracted much attention. She has written five volumes of bright 
tales for children. In 1874 appeared “ Some Women’s Hearts ” and “ Miss Eyre 
from Boston.” After this Mrs. Moulton visited Europe, and out of the memories of 
her foreign travel, she issued in 1881 a book entitled “ Random Rambles,” and 
six years later came “ Ours and Our Neighbors,” a book of essays on social subjects, 
and the same year she issued two volumes of poems. In 1889 she published simul¬ 
taneously, in England and America, her most popular work, entitled “ In the 
Garden of Dreams,” which has passed through many editions with increased popu¬ 
larity. Mrs. Moulton has also edited three volumes of the poems of Philip Burke 
Marseton. 

Mrs. Moulton’s residence has been in Boston since 1855, with the exception of 


































LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 


269 


sixteen consecutive summers and autumns which she passed in Europe. In London 
she is especially at home, where she lives surrounded by friends and friendly critics, 
who value both her winning personality and her literary art. She has been through¬ 
out her life a systematic worker, devoting a part of each day to literary labor. 
Aside from her books, she has done much writing for newspapers and periodicals. 
From 1870 to 1876 she was the Boston literary correspondent for the New York 
“ Tribune,” and for nearly five .years she wrote a weekly letter reviewing new books 
and literary people for the Boston “ Sunday Herald,” the series of these letters 
closing in December, 1891. 

Mrs. Moulton, while not admitting herself to be a hero worshipper, is full of 
appreciation of the great bygone names of honor, and enjoys with a keen relish the 
memory of the personal friendship she had with such immortals as Whittier, Long¬ 
fellow and Lowell, on this side of the Atlantic, and with Swinburne, Tennyson and 
others, in Europe. 

-K>«- 


“ IF THERE WERE DREAMS TO SELL.”* 


“ If there were dreams to sell, 

What would you buy?”—B eddoes. 



there were dreams to sell, 
Do I not know full well 
What I would buy ? 
Hope’s dear delusive spell, 
Its happy tale to tell— 
Joy’s fleeting sigh. 


I would be glad once more— 
Slip through an open door 
Into Life’s glory— 
Keep what I spent of yore, 
Find what I lost before— 
Hear an old story. 


I would be young again— 
Youth’s madding bliss and bane 
I would recapture— 
Though it were keen with pain, 
All else seems void and vain 
To that fine rapture. 


As it of old befell, 

Breaking Death’s frozen spell, 
Love should draw nigh 
If there were dreams to sell, 
Do I not know too well 
What I would buy ? 


-•O*- 


WIFE TO HUSBAND.* 


HEN I am dust, and thou art quick and 
glad. 

Bethink thee, sometimes, what good days 
we had, 

What happy days, beside the shining seas, 

Or by the twilight fire, in careless ease, 

Reading the rhymes of some old poet lover, 

Or whispering our own love-story over. 

When thou hast mourned for me a seemly space, 

And set another in my vacant place, 

Charmed with her brightness, trusting in her truth, 
Warmed to new life by her beguiling youth, 

Be happy, dearest one, and surely know 
I would not have thee thy life’s joys forego. 


Yet think of me sometimes, where, cold and still, 

I lie, who once was swift to do thy will, 

Whose lips so often answered to thy kiss, 

Who, dying, blessed thee for that bygone bliss: 

I pray thee do not bar my presence quite 
From thy new life, so full of new delight. 

I would not vex thee, waiting by thy side; 

My presence should not chill thy fair young bride ; 
Only bethink thee how alone I lie: 

To die and be forgotten were to die 
A double death ; and I deserve of thee 
Some grace of memory, fair howe’er she be. 



* Copyright, Roberts Bros. 


















270 


LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 


THE LAST GOOD-BYE* 


shall we know it is the last good-bye ? 
The skies will not be darkened in that 
hour, 

No sudden light will fall on leaf or 
flower, 

No single bird will hush its careless cry, 

And you will hold my hands, and smile or sigh 
Just as before. Perchance the sudden tears 


In your dear eyes will answer to my fears ; 

But there will come no voice of prophecy: 

No voice to whisper, “ Now, and not again, 

Space for last words, last kisses, and last prayer, 
For all the wild, unmitigated pain 
Of those who, parting clasp hands with despair.” 

“ Who knows?” w 7 e say, but doubt and fear remain, 
Would any choose to part thus unaware? 



-*o 


NEXT YEAR. 


HE lark is singing gaily in the meadow, the 
sun is rising o’er the dark blue hills; 
But she is gone, the music of whose talk¬ 
ing was sweeter than the voice of 
summer rills. 

Sometimes I see the bluebells of the forest, and think 
of her blue eyes ; 

Sometimes I seem to hear the rustle of her garments : 
’tis but the wind’s low sighs. 

I see the sunbeams trail along the orchard, and fall 
in thought to tangling up her hair ; 

And sometimes round the sinless lips of childhood 
breaks forth a smile, such as she used to wear; 


But never any pleasant thing, around, above us, 
seems to me like her love— 

More lofty than the skies that bend and brighten o'er 
us, more constant than the dove. 

She walks no more beside me in the morning; she 
meets me not on any summer eve ; 

But once at night I heard a low voice calling—“ Oh, 
faithful friend, thou hast not long to grieve!” 

Next year, when larks are singing gaily in the meadow, 
I shall not hear their tone ; 

But she in the dim, far-off country of the stranger, 
will walk no more alone. 



-*<>♦ 


MY MOTHER’S PICTURE. 


(FROM “ IN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS.”) 


OW shall I here her placid picture paint 
With touch that shall be delicate, yet sure ? 
Soft hair above a brow so high and pure 
Years have not soiled it with an earthly taint, 
Needing no aureole to prove her saint; 

Firm mind that no temptation could allure; 

Soul strong to do, heart stronger to endure ; 


And calm, sweet lips that uttered no complaint. 

So have I seen her, in my darkest days 

And when her own most sacred ties were riven, 
Walk tranquilly in self-denying ways, 

Asking for strength, and sure it would be given ; 
Filling her life with lowly prayer, high praise— 

So shall I see her, if we meet in heaven. 



Copyright, Roberts Bros. 







































































. 1 - 















































































































































































































WASHINGTON IRVING. 


THE FIRST AMERICAN AUTHOR OF RENOWN. 
“The Cervantes of the New World.” 



HE first American who openly adopted literature as a calling and suc¬ 
cessfully relied upon his pen for support was Washington Irving, 
and the abiding popularity of this author is the best guarantee of 
his permanent place in the world of letters. Since 1802, when 
Irving begun to write, empires have arisen and passed away; new 
arts have been invented and adopted, and have pushed the old out 
of use; the household economy of mankind has undergone a revolution; science has 
learned a new dialect and forgotten the old; but the words of this charming writer 
are still as bright and even more read by men and women to-day than when they 
came fresh from his pen and their brilliant author was not only the literary lion of 
America, but was a shining light in the circles of the old World. The pages of 
Irving are a striking illustration of the fact that the language of the heart never be¬ 
comes obsolete, that Truth, and Good, and Beauty, the offspring of God, are not sub¬ 
ject to the changes which beset the empire of man, and we feel sure that Washing¬ 
ton Irving, whose works were the delight of our grandparents and parents, and are 
now contributing to our own happiness, will also be read with the same eager pleas¬ 
ure by those who come after us. 

It was on the 3rd of April, 1783, when the British were in possession of New 
York City and George Washington was exerting his forces to drive them away, that 
young Irving was born. Like Benjamin Franklin, he was the youngest of many 
sons. His father was a Scotchman and his mother an Englishwoman, who emigrated 
to America soon after their marriage and settled in New York about the year 1770. 
The Irvings were staunch patriots and did what they could to relieve the sufferings 
of American prisoners while the British held the city, and their son was not chris¬ 
tened until the English evacuated the town and George Washington came in and 
took possession. In her exultation over this event Mrs Irving exclaimed: “Wash¬ 
ington’s work is ended and this child shall be named after him.” Six years later, 
in 1789, George Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the 
United States, in New York, which was then the capital of the country. Shortly 
after this the Scotch servant girl with little Irving in charge, seeing the President 
on the street called out: “Please, your honor, here’s a bairn was named after you.” 
Washington bade her bring the boy to him, and placing his hands on his head 
gave him his blessing. 


271 



































272 


WASHINGTON HIVING. 

As a boy Irving was playful rather than studious. His delicate health prevented 
his entering college, and the educational training which he received was at sundry 
small schools, and this ceased at the age of sixteen, at which time he began to 
study law. Irving’s opportunity came in 1802, when his brother, Hr. 1 eter 
Irving, established a daily paper, to which AVashington, then only nineteen, con¬ 
tributed a series of essays under the signature of “ Jonathan Oldstyle. Iliey were 
written in a humorous vein and met an instant success, being quoted and copied as 
far and wide as the sayings of Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Bichard had been fifty 
years before. 

In 1804 Irving’s failing health compelled him to abandon his legal studies and lie 
went abroad, spending two years in European travel, and gathering a stock of 
material for liis future writings. In 1806 he returned to New V ork, took up again 




SUNNYSIDE, THE HOME OF WASHINGTON IRVING. 

the study of law and was admitted to the bar, but never practised the profession. 
The next year, with his brother and James K. Paulding, he started the “Salma¬ 
gundi; or, Whim-Whams and Opinions of Lancelot Langstaff, Esq.,” which was 
published fortnightly and ran through twenty numbers. This humorous magazine, 
intended by its authors only to “hit off” the gossip of that day, has now become an 
amusing history of society events a century ago, and is still widely read. The next 
two years were occupied in writing his “Knickerbocker’s History of New York,” 
wdiich was published in December, 1809. This was to have been the joint work of 
AVashington Irving and his brother, Peter, but the latter was called away to Europe, 
and AVashington did it alone. To introduce this book, Irving, with genuine Yankee 
shrewdness, advertised in the newspapers some months in advance of its publication 
for an old gentleman by the name of Knickerbocker, who had suddenly disap¬ 
peared, leaving behind him the manuscript of a book and his board bill unpaid. 
It was finally announced that his landlord had decided to publish the book in 
the hope of realizing enough profit to satisfy his claim for board against the author. 
















WASHINGTON IRVING. 


273 


It proved to be the most readable book which had yet appeared in America and was 
received with enthusiasm by the public. Abroad it created almost as great a sensa¬ 
tion. Sir Walter Scott read it aloud to his family, and it first revealed to the critics 
of the Old World that America was to have a literature of its own. This book 
quickly brought its author both reputation and money, and with bright hopes he 
entered the business firm of his brother as a silent partner. 

During the War of 1812 Irving was editorially connected with the “Analectic 
Magazine” in Philadelphia, for which he wrote a number of articles. He was 
stanchly patriotic throughout the war, though he deplored its existence. In 1815, 
after peace was proclaimed, he made a second voyage across the Atlantic, intending 
to remain only a short while, but the failure of his brother’s firm blasted his busi¬ 
ness hopes and necessitated his return to literature. He, therefore, remained abroad 
for seventeen years, and it was in the Old Country that he wrote his famous “Sketch 
Book,” published in parts in New York in 1819, and in book form in London in 
1820, the author receiving for the copyright four hundred pounds (nearly $2,000). 
In 1822 he published “Bracebridge Hall, or. The Humorist;” and in 1824 the “’Tales 
of the Traveler.” From 1826 to 1829 Irving spent much time in Spain, where he 
gathered material for the “Life of Christopher Columbus” (1828); “Chronicles of 
the Conquest of Granada,” and “The Alhambra, or, The New Sketch Book,” which 
appeared in 1832. 

During the last two years of Irving’s stay abroad he was Secretary of the United 
States Legation at London, and on his return to America in 1832 was received with 
great public honor. His books now brought him an adequate income, and he built 
for himself a handsome villa at Irvington, New York—which he named “Sunny- 
side”—where he continued to reside until his death, with the exception of four 
years (1842-46), during which time he represented the United States at the Court 
of Madrid. While residing at Sunnyside he wrote the “Tours of the Prairies” 
(1835); “Astoria” (1836); “Adventures of Captain Bonneville” (1837). After 
his return from the Court of Spain he edited a new edition of his complete works, 
issued in 1850. He also published in 1849 and 1850 “Oliver Goldsmith: a Bio¬ 
graphy,” and “Mahomet and His Successors.” From 1850 to 1859 he published 
only two books, namely, “Wolfret’s Boost and Other Papers” and the “Life of 
George Washington;” the latter issued just before his death, which occurred at 
Sunnyside, November 28, 1859. His nephew, P. H. Irving, afterwards prepared 
the “ Life and Letters of Washington Irving” (1863), and also edited and published 
his “Spanish Papers and Other Miscellanies” (1866.) 

That Irving never married may be attributed to the fact that his fiance, Miss 
Matilda Hoffman, a charming and beautiful girl, to whom he was devotedly attached, 
died suddenly soon after they were engaged. Irving, then twenty-six, bore the 
blow like a man, but he carried the scar through life. 

The fame of Irving becomes the more resplendent when we remember that 
he was the first great pioneer in American letters. Franklin was the only man 
of any note who had preceded him, and his writings were confined to a much 
smaller scope. It was while Bryon and Scott were leaders of English letters 
that Irving, without the advantage of a college education, went to England 
and met and associated with the greatest of English authors, issued several 
18 



274 


WASHINGTON IRNING. 


of his books and made good his own title to an honorable position in literature 
among them, not only leaving his impress upon English society but he created an 
illustrious following among her authors that any man should be proud of; for it is 
from Irving’s “Sketch Book” that the revival of Christmas feasts was inaugurated, 
which Dickens afterwards took up and pursued to further lengths, making Irving 
his model in more ways than is generally supposed. Sir Walter Scott and Thack¬ 
eray were his friends and admirers. The latter calls Irving the “first ambassador 
whom the new world of letters sent to the old.” At home Irving’s influence was 
even greater. His tales like “Rip Van Winkle” and its fellows became the first 
fruits of an abundant harvest, rich in local flavor, which later American story-tellers 
like Hawthorne, Poe, Bret Harte and Cable, all in their own way, following in his 
footsteps, have gathered after him. 

The genius of Irving was not of that stalwart, rugged character which conquered 
by admiration. It rather won its way softly and by the aid of genial sentiment, 
human sympathy and pungent humor. His heart was quick to catch the sentiment, 
and his imagination as quick to follow the thread of an incident to its most charm¬ 
ing conclusion. He it was who peopled the green nooks of “Sleepy Hollow” and 
the rocky crags of the Catskills, describing landscape and character with a charm 
which no later American writer has surpassed; and it was his delicate subtlety and 
keen insight which called into being in his “Knickerbocker’s History” a civiliza¬ 
tion, giving to the legend the substance of truth, and presenting a fiction so that it 
passed for a fact. This is a feat which very few authors have accomplished. 

That Irving might have been a successful historian is evinced by his “Life of 
Columbus” and “Life of Washington,” in which his exhaustive inquiry into details 
and his treatment of the same leave nothing new in the lives of these great men to 
be told; but it is on his descriptive essays, such as we find in his “Sketch Book,” 
“The Alhambra” and “Knickerbocker’s History,” that his title to enduring fame 
most securely rests. 

The poet, Lowell, in his “Fable for Critics,” thus happily characterizes Washing¬ 
ton Irving: 


“ What! Irving ? thrice welcome warm heart and fine brain, 
You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain, 

And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there 
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair; 

Nay, don’t be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching, 

I shan’t run directly against my own preaching, 

And having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, 

Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes; 

But allow me to speak what I honestly feel, 

To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, 

Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, 

With the whole of that partnership’s stock and good-will, 

Mix well, and while stirring, hum o’er, as a spell, 

The ‘fine old English Gentleman,’ simmer it well, 

Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain, 

That only the finest and clearest remain. 

Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives 
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves, 
And you’ll find a choice nature not wholly deserving 
A name either English or Yankee—just Irving.” 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 


275 


THE ORGAN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

FROM THE SKETCH BOOK. 


HE sound of casual footsteps had ceased 
from the abbey. I could only hear, now 
and then, the distant voice of the priest 
repeating the evening service, and the faint responses 
of the choir; these paused for a time, and all was 
hushed. The stillness, the desertion and obscurity 
that were gradually prevailing around, gave a deeper 
and more solemn interest to the place: 

For in the silent grave no conversation, 

No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers, 

No careful father’s counsel—nothing’s heard, 

For nothing is, but all oblivion, 

Dust, and an endless darkness. 

Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ 
hurst upon the ear, falling with double and redoubled 
intensity, and rolling, as it were, huge billows of 
sound. How well do their volume and grandeur ac¬ 
cord with this mighty building! With what pomp 
do they swell through its vast vaults, and breathe 
their awful harmony through these caves of death, 
and make the silent sepulchre vocal! And now they 


rise in triumph and acclamation, heaving higher and 
higher their accordant notes, and piling sound on 
sound. And now they pause, and the soft voices of 
the choir break out into sweet gushes of melody; 
they soar aloft, and warble along the roof, and seem 
to play about these lofty vaults like the pure airs of 
heaven. Again the pealing organ heaves its thrilling 
thunders, compressing air into music, and rolling it 
forth upon the soul. What long-drawn cadences! 
What solemn sweeping concords! It grows more 
and more dense and powerful—it fills the vast pile, 
and seems to jar the very walls—the ear is stunned— 
the senses are overwhelmed. And now it is winding 
up in full jubilee—it is rising from the earth to 
heaven—The very soul seems rapt away and floated 
upwards on this swelling tide of harmony ! 

I sat for some time lost in that kind of reverie 
which a strain of music is apt sometimes to inspire: 
the shadows of evening were gradually thickening 
round me ; the monuments began to cast deeper and 
deeper gloom ; and the distant clock again gave token 
of the slowly waning day. 



O* 


BALTUS VAN TASSEL’S FARM. 



CHABOD CRANE had a soft and foolish 
heart toward the sex ; and it is not to be 
wondered at, that so tempting a morsel 
soon found favor in his eyes; more especially after 
he had visited her in her paternal mansion. Old 
Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, 
contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is 
true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the 


boundaries of his own farm ; but within those every¬ 
thing was snug, happy, and well-conditioned. He 
was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it, 
and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance, 
rather than the style in which he lived. His strong¬ 
hold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in 
one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks, in which 
the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great 
elm-tree spread its branches over it, at the foot of 
which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest 


water, in a little well formed of a barrel; and then 
stole sparkling away through the grass, to a neigh¬ 
boring brook, that bubbled along among alders and 
dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast 
barn, that might have served for a church ; every 
window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth 
with the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily 
resounding within it from morning to night; swallows 
and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves ; 
and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, 
as if watching the weather, some with their heads 
under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and 
others swelling and cooing, and bowing about their 
dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the loot. 
Sleek, unwielding porkers were grunting in the repose 
and abundance of their pens; whence sallied forth, 
now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff 
the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were 













276 


WASHINGTON IRVING. 


riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of 
ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through 
the farmyard, and guinea fowls fretting about it, like 
ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discon¬ 
tented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant 
cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a fine 
gentleman, clapping his burnished wings, and crowing 
in the pride and gladness of his heart—sometimes 
tearing up the earth with his feet, and then gener¬ 
ously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and 
children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had 
discovered. 

The pedagogue’s mouth watered, as he looked upon 
this sumptuous promise of winter fare. In his de¬ 
vouring mind’s eye, he pictured to himself every 
roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his 
belly and an apple in his mouth ; the pigeons were 
snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in 
with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in 
their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, 
like snug married couples, with a decent competency 
of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the 
future sleek side of bacon and juicy relishing ham ; 
not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with 


its gizard under its wing, and, peradventure, a neck¬ 
lace of savory sausages; and even bright chanticleer 
himself lay sprawding on his back, in a side-dish, with 
uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his 
chivalrous spirit disdained to ask wdiile living. 

As the enraptured Icliabod fancied all this, and as 
he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow- 
lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, 
and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with 
ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of 
Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel, who 
was to inherit those domains, and his imagination ex¬ 
panded with the idea, how they might be readily 
turned into cash, and the money invested in immense 
tracts of wild land and shingle palaces in the wilder¬ 
ness. 

Nay, his busy fanciy already realized his hopes, 
and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with 
a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a 
wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and 
kettles dangling beneath ; and he beheld himself be¬ 
striding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, set¬ 
ting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord knows 
where. 


►<>♦- 


COLUMBUS AT BARCELONA. 

(FROM “ LIFE OF COLUMBUS.”) 


HE letter of Columbus to the Spanish mon- 
archs had produced the greatest sensation 
at court. The event he announced was 
considered the most extraordinary of their prosperous 
reign, and, following so close upon the conquest of 
Granada, was pronounced a signal mark of divine 
favor for that triumph achieved in the cause of the 
true faith. The sovereigns themselves were for a time 
dazzled by this sudden and easy acquisition of a new 
empire, of indefinite extent and apparently boundless 
wealth. 

vly vly vp vp vp »p 

»p 'P 

About the middle of April Columbus arrived at 
Barcelona, where every preparation had been made to 
give him a solemn and magnificent reception. The 
beauty and serenity of the weather in that genial sea¬ 
son and favored climate contributed to give splendor 
to this memorable ceremony. As he drew near the 


place, many of the more youthful courtiers and 
hidalgos, together with a vast concourse of the pop¬ 
ulace, came forth to meet and welcome him. His 
entrance into this noble city has been compared to one 
of those triumphs which the Romans were accustomed 
to decree to conquerors. First were paraded the 
Indians, painted according to their savage fashion, and 
decorated with their national ornaments of gold ; after 
these were borne various kinds of live parrots, to¬ 
gether with stuffed birds and animals of unknown 
species, and rare plants supposed to be of precious 
qualities; while great care was taken to make a con¬ 
spicuous display of Indian coronets, bracelets, and other 
decorations of gold, which might give an idea of the 
wealth of the newly discovered regions. After this 
followed Columbus on horseback, surrounded by a 
brilliant cavalcade of Spanish chivalry. The streets 
were almost impassable from the countless multitude; 










WASHINGTON IRVING. 


277 


the windows and balconies were crowded with the fair: 
the very roofs were covered with spectators. It 
seemed as if the public eye could not be sated with 
gazing on these trophies of an unknown world, or on 
the remarkable man by whom it had been discovered. 
There was a sublimity in this event that mingled a 
solemn feeling with the public joy. It was looked 
upon as a vast and signal dispensation of Providence 
in reward for the piety of the monarchs; and the 
majestic and venerable appearance of the discoverer, 
so different from the youth and buoyancy generally 
expected from roving enterprise, seemed in harmony 
with the grandeur and dignity of his achievement. 

To receive him with suitable pomp and distinction, 
the sovereigns had ordered their throne to be placed 
in public, under a rich canopy of brocade of gold, in 
a vast and splendid saloon. Here the king and queen 
awaited his arrival, seated in state, with the Prince 
Juan beside them, and attended by the dignitaries of 
their court, and the principal nobility of Castile^ 
Valencia, Catalonia, and Aragon, all impatient to be¬ 
hold the man who had conferred so incalculable a 
benefit upon the nation. At length Columbus en¬ 
tered the hall, surrounded by a brilliant crowd of 
cavaliers, among whom, says Las Casas, he was con¬ 
spicuous for his stately and commanding person, 
which, with his countenance rendered venerable by 
his gray hairs, gave him the august appearance of a 
senator of Pome. A modest smile lighted up his 
features, showing that he enjoyed the state and glory 
in which he came, and certainly nothing could be 
more deeply moving to a mind inflamed by noble am¬ 
bition, and conscious of having greatly deserved, than 
these testimonials of the admiration and gratitude of 
a nation or rather of a world. As Columbus ap¬ 
proached, the sovereigns rose, as if receiving a person 


of the highest rank. Bending his knees, he offered 
to kiss their hands ; but there was some hesitation on 
their part to permit this act of homage. Raising him 
in the most gracious manner, they ordered him to seat 
himself in their presence; a rare honor in this proud 
and punctilious court. 

At their request he now gave an account of the 
most striking events of his voyage, and a description 
of the islands discovered. He displayed specimens of 
unknown birds and other animals; of rare plants of 
medicinal and aromatic virtues ; of native gold in dust, 
in crude masses, or labored into barbaric ornaments; 
and, above all, the natives of these countries, who were 
objects of intense and inexhaustible interest. All these 
he pronounced mere harbingers of greater discoveries 
yet to be made, which would add realms of incalcu¬ 
lable wealth to the dominions of their majesties, and 
whole nations of proselytes to the true faith. 

When he had finished, the sovereigns sank on their 
knees, and, raising their clasped hands to heaven, 
their eyes filled with tears of joy and gratitude, poured 
forth thanks and praises to God for so great a provi¬ 
dence ; all present followed their example; a deep 
and solemn enthusiasm pervaded that splendid assem¬ 
bly, and prevented all common acclamations of tri¬ 
umph. The anthem Te Deum laudamus , chanted by 
the choir of the royal chapel, with the accompaniment 
of instruments, rose in full body of sacred harmony, 
bearing up as it were the feelings and thoughts of the 
auditors to heaven, “ so that,” says the venerable Las 
Casas, “ it seemed as if in that hour they communi¬ 
cated with celestial delights.” Such was the solemn 
and pious manner in which the brilliant court of Spain 
celebrated this sublime event; offering up a grateful 
tribute of melody and praise, and giving glory to God 
for the discovery of another world. 


-•O*- 


THE GALLOPING HESSIAN. 


HE revel now gradually broke up. The old 
farmers gathered together their families in 
their wagons, and were heard for some time 
rattling alone: the hollow roads and over the distant hills. 
Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their 
favorite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, ming¬ 
ling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent 



woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter until they grad- 
ually died away—and the late scene of noise and frolic 
was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered be¬ 
hind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have 
a tete-a-tete with the heiress, fully convinced that he 
was now on the high road to success. What passed 
at this interview I will not pretend to say, for, in fact, 










278 


WASHINGTON IRVING. 


I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must 
have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after 
no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and 
chapfallen. Oh these women ! these women! Could 
that girl have been playing otf any of her coquettish 
tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor peda¬ 
gogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his 
rival? Heaven only knows, not I! Let it suffice to 
say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had 
been sacking a hen-roost, rather than a fair lady’s 
heart. Without looking to the right or left to 
notice the scene of rural wealth on which he had so 
often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and 
with several hearty cuffs and kicks, roused his steed 
most uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in 
which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains 
of corn and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and 
clover. 

It was the very witching time of night that Icha¬ 
bod, heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travels 
homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which 
rise above Tarrytown, and which he had traversed 
so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal 
as himself. Far below him the Tappan Zee spread 
its dusk and indistinct waste of waters, with here and 
there the tall mast of a sloop riding quietly at anchor 
under the land. In the dead hush of midnight he 
could even hear the barking of the watch-dog from 
the opposite shore of the Hudson ; but it was so vague 
and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from 
this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, 
the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awak¬ 
ened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse 
away among the hills—but it was like a dreaming 
sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, 
but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or 
perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog, from a 
neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably, and 
turning suddenly in his bed. 

All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had 
heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his 
recollection. The night grew darker and darker, the 
stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving 
clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had 
never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, 
approaching the very place where many of the scenes 
of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of 


the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered 
like a giant above all the other trees of the neighbor¬ 
hood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were 
gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for 
ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth and 
rising again into the air. It was connected with the 
tragical story of the unfortunate Andre, who had 
been taken prisoner hard by; and was universally 
known by the name of Major Andre’s tree. The 
common people regarded it with a mixture of respect 
and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate 
of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the tales 
of strange sights and doleful lamentations told con¬ 
cerning it. 

As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began 
to whistle; he thought his whistle was answered ; it 
was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry 
branches. As he approached a little nearer, he 
thought he saw something white hanging in the 
midst of the tree—he paused and ceased whistling; 
but, on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a 
place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, 
and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a 
groan—his teeth chattered, and his knees smote 
against the saddle; it was but the rubbing of one 
huge bough upon another, as they were swayed about 
by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but 
new perils lay before him. 

About two hundred yards from the tree a small 
brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and 
thickly-wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley’s 
Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served 
for"a bridge over this stream. On that side of the 
road where the brook entered the wood, a group of 
oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape¬ 
vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this 
bridge was the severest trial. It was at this identical 
spot that the unfortunate Andre was captured, and 
under the covert of those chestnuts and vines were 
the sturdy yoemen concealed w r ho surprised him. 
This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, 
and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has 
to pass it alone after dark. 

As he approached the stream, his heart began to 
thump ; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, 
gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and 
attempted to dash briskly across the bridge ; but in- 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 


279 


stead of starting forward, the perverse old animal 
made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against 
the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the 
delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked 
lustily with the contrary foot; it was all in vain ; his 
steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to 
the opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles 
and alder-bushes. The schoolmaster now t bestowed 
both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old 
Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffing and snort¬ 
ing, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a 
suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling 
over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp 
by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of 
Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the 
margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, mis¬ 
shapen, black and towering. It stirred not, but 
seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic 
monster ready to spring upon the traveler. 

The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his 
head with terror. What was to be done ? To turn 
and fly was now too late ; and, besides, what chance 
was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, 
which could ride upon the wings of the wind ? 
Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he 
demanded in stammering accents—■“ Who are you ?” 
He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a 
still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. 
Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible 
Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with 
involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then 
the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and 
with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the 
middle of the road. Though the night was dark 
and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now 
in some degree be ascertained. He appeared to be a 
horseman of large dimensions, and mounted on a 
black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of 
molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side 
of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old 
Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and 
waywardness. 

Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange mid¬ 
night companion, and bethought himself of the 
adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping 
Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving 
him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his 


horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell 
into a walk, thinking to lag behind—the other did 
the same. His heart began to sink within him ; he 
endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched 
tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could 
not utter a stave. There was something in the 
moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious com¬ 
panion that was mysterious and appalling. It was 
soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising 
ground, which brought the figure of his fellow- 
traveler in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, 
and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on 
perceiving that he was headless !—but his horror was 
still more increased on observing that the head/which 
should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before 
him on the pommel of the saddle: his terror rose to 
desperation ; he rained a shower of kicks and blows 
upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to 
give his companion the slip—but the spectre started 
full jump with him. Away then they dashed, through 
thick and thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at 
every bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in 
the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over 
his horse’s head, in the eagerness of his flight. 

They had now reached the road which turns off to 
Sleepy Hollow ; but Gunpowder, who seemed pos¬ 
sessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made 
an opposite turn, and plunged headlong down the hill 
to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow, 
shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where 
it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story, and just 
beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the 
whitewashed church. 

As yet the panic of the steed had given his un¬ 
skilful rider an apparent advantage in the chase; but 
just as he had got half-way through the hollow the 
girths of the saddle gave way. and he felt it slipping 
from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and 
endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain ; and he had 
just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder 
round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, 
and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. 
For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper’s 
wrath passed across his mind—for it was his Sun¬ 
day saddle ; but this was no time for petty fears; 
the goblin was hard on his haunches ; and (unskilful 
rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain 



280 


WASHINGTON IRVING. 


his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes 
on the other, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge 
of his horse’s backbone, with a violence that he verily 
feared would cleave him asunder. 

An opening in the trees now cheered him with the 
hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The 
wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of 
the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He 
saw the w r alls of the church dimly glaring under the 
trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom 
Bones’ ghostly competitor had disappeared. “ If I 
can but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “ I am 
safe.” Just then he heard the black steed panting 
and blowing close behind him ; he even fancied that 
he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in 
the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; 
he thundered over the resounding planks ; he gained 
the opposite side ; and now Ichabod cast a look be¬ 
hind to see if his pursuer should vanish, ac¬ 
cording to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. 
Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups and 
in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod 
endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too 
Jate. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous 
crash—he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and 
Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider 
passed by like a whirlwind. 

The next morning the old horse was found without 
his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly 
cropping the grass at his master’s gate. Ichabod did 
not make his appearance at breakfast—dinner-hour 
came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled in the 
schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the 
brook ; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper 
now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of 
poor Ichabod and his saddle. An inquiry was set on 
foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon 
his traces. In one part of the road leading to the 
church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; 
the tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply dented in the road, 
and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the 
bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part 


of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, 
was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and 
close beside it a shattered pumpkin. 

The brook was searched, but the body of the 
schoolmaster was not to be discovered. Hans Van 
Bipper, as executor of his estate, examined the 
bundle, which contained all his worldly effects. They 
consisted of two shirts and a half; two stocks for the 
neck; a pair or two of worsted stockings ; an old 
pair of corduroy smallclothes; a rusty razor; a book 
of psalm tunes, full of dog’s ears; and a broken 
pitch-pipe. As to the books and furniture of the 
schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, ex¬ 
cepting Cotton Mather’s History of Witchcraft, a 
New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and 
fortune-telling : in which last was a sheet of foolscap 
much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts 
to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of 
Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl 
were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van 
Ripper ; who from that time forward determined to 
send his children no more to school, observing that 
he never knew any good come of this same reading 
and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster pos¬ 
sessed, and he had received his quarter’s pay but a 
day or two before, he must have had about his person 
at the time of his disappearance. 

The mysterious event caused much speculation at 
the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers 
and gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the 
bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin 
had fyeen found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, 
and a whole budget of others, were called to mind; 
and when they had diligently considered them all, 
and compared them with the symptoms of the present 
case, they shook their heads, and came to the con¬ 
clusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the 
Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in 
nobody’s debt, nobody troubled his head any more 
about him, the school was removed to a different part 
of the Hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his 
stead. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 


HUMORIST AND JOURNALIST. 


HARLES DUDLEY WARNER belongs to a class of writers which 
has been aptly called the meditative school in American literature, 
but few of the so-called meditative writers so sparkle with humor as 
does the genial and humane author of “ My Summer in a Garden,” 
and few writers of any school have so succeeded in presenting whole¬ 
some truth and lofty thought in the pleasing form of humorous con¬ 
versation on such common subjects as gardening, back-log fires, and the every-day 
life of the farmer-boy. 

He is one of our leading apostles of culture, and he is himself a glowing example 
of the worth of culture, for he has steadily raised himself from the flat levels of 
life to a lofty pinnacle of influence and power simply because he possessed in high 
degree a keen insight, a dainty lightness of touch, a delicacy of thought and style, a 
kindly humor, and a racy scent for “ human nature.” It was a long time before he 
discovered his own powers and he labored at a distasteful profession until his nature 
cried out for its true sphere, but his early life in many respects was imperceptibly 
ministering to the man that was to be. 

He was born of English non-conformist stock, in the hill country of Plainfield, 
Massachusetts, in 1829—a lineal descendent of a “ Pilgrim Father ” and the son of 
a well-to-do farmer, of more than ordinary mental parts. He had his period in the 
New England district school, and in 1851 he was graduated from Hamilton College, 
New York, where he had gained a college reputation as a writer. 

Had he not been a “ born writer ” the next period of his life would have made a 
literary career impossible for him. A winter in Michigan, ending in dismal failure, 
two years of frontier life as a surveyor, and then the pursuit of legal studies, followed 
by the practice of law in Chicago seemed to have been hostages to fortune agains't 
the pursuit of fame in the field of pure literature. 

But he had the blood of the “ Brahman caste ” and it was certain to assert itself. 
In 1860, his friend Hawley (now United States Senator from Connecticut) invited 
him to accept the position of assistant editor on the Hartford “ Press,” and his 
talents for successful journalism were at once apparent, from which he stepped quite 
naturally into the narrower circle—“ the brotherhood of authors.” 

“ My Summer in a Garden” (1870), his first literary work, was first written as a 
series of weekly articles for the Hartford “ Courant,” and their reception at once 
made him a man of note. 



281 








































282 


CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 


This work is a delightful prose pastoral, in which the author described his ex 
periences with gardening and finds quaint and subtle connections between “ pusley ' 
and “ original sin,” while its humorous touches of nature and human nature give it 
a peculiar charm. “ Saunterings,” a volume of reminiscences of European travel, 
was also published the same year. 

“ Back-Log Studies” (1872), written in praise of the sweet and kindly influences 
of the home fireside, appeared first as a series in “ Scribner’s Magazine ” and added 
much to the author’s reputation, as it marked a decided advance in style and elegance 
of diction. 

His carefully prepared occasional addresses, on such subjects as Education, Cul¬ 
ture and Progress, show that he has deej) convictions and an earnestness of heart, as 
well as the delicate fancy and playful humor which first made him a favorite author. 
If he is an apostle of culture, he is no less the herald of the truth that “ the scholar 
must make his poetry and learning subserve the wants of the toiling and aspiring 
multitude.” 

“Baddeck, and That Sort of Thing” (1874) is a delightful sketch of travels, a 
field of literature in which Warner is a master. “ My Winter on the Nile ” (1876), 
“In the Levant” (1877), “In the Wilderness” (1878), “ Roundabout Journey” 
(1883), and “ Their Pilgrimage” (1886) are his other contributions to this depart¬ 
ment of literature. 

In 1884 he became coeditor of “ Harper’s Magazine,” to which he has contri¬ 
buted a valuable series of papers on “ Studies in the South,” “ Studies in the Great 
West,” and “ Mexican Papers,” critically discussing the educational, political, and 
social condition of these states. 

He is the author of “ Captain John Smith,” and of “ Washington Irving ” in 
the “ Men of Letters Series ” of which he is editor. 

Nowhere is his humor more free and unrestrained than in “ Being A Boy ” and in 
“ How I Shot the Bear.” 

His home is at Hartford, Conn. 




AM more and more impressed with the 
moral qualities of vegetables, and contem¬ 
plate forming a science which shall rank 
with comparative philology—the science of compara¬ 
tive vegetable morality. We live in an age of 
Protoplasm. And, if life matter is essentially the 
same in all forms of life, I propose to begin early, 
and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I 
am responsible. I will not associate with any vege¬ 
table which is disreputable, or has not some quality 
which can contribute to my moral growth. 

Why do we respect some vegetables and despise 
others, when all of them come to an equal honor or 
ignominy on the table ? The bean is a graceful, con¬ 


g, engaging vine; but you never can put beans into 
poetry nor into the highest sort of prose. There is 
no dignity in the bean. Corn—which in my garden 
grows alongside the bean, and, so far as I can see, 
with no affectation of superiority—is, however, the 
child of song. It waves in all literature. But mix 
it with beans, and its high tone is gone. Succotash 
is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The bean is a vulgar 
vegetable, without culture, or any flavor of high 
society among vegetables. 

Then there is the cool cucumber—like so many 
people, good for nothing when its ripe and the wild¬ 
ness has gone out of it. How inferior to the melon, 


which grows upon a similar vine, is of a like watery 
Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 


THE MORAL QUALITY OF VEGETABLES* 

FROM ‘'MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.” 

fidin 











CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 




consistency, but is not half so valuable! The 
cucumber is a sort of low comedian in a company 
where the melon is a minor gentleman. I might 
also contrast the celery with the potato. The asso¬ 
ciations are as opposite as the dining-room of the 
duchess and the cabin of the peasant. I admire the 
potato both in vine and blossom; but it is not aristo¬ 
cratic. 

The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. 
Lettuce is like conversation : it must be fresh and crisp, 
so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it. 
Lettuce, like most talkers, is however apt to run 
rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort which comes to 
a head, and so remains—like a few people I know— 
growing more solid and satisfactory and tender at the 
same time, and whiter at the centre, and crisp in 
their maturity. Lettuce, like conversation, requires 
a good deal of oil, to avoid friction, and keep the 
company smooth ; a pinch of Attic Salt, a dash of 
pepper, a quantity of mustard and vinegar, by all 
means—but so mixed that you will notice no sharp 
contrast—and a trifle of sugar. You can put any¬ 
thing—and the more things the better—into salad, 
as into conversation; but everything depends upon 
the skill in mixing. I feel that I am in the best 
society when I am with lettuce. It is in the select 
circle of vegetables. The tomato appears well on 


the table ; but you do not want to ask its origin. It is 
a most agreeable parvenu. 

Of course, I have said nothing about the berries. 
They live in another and more ideal region; except 
perhaps the currant. Here we see that even among 
berries there are degrees of breeding. The currant 
is well enough, clear as truth, and exquisite in color; 
but I ask you to notice how far it is from the exclu¬ 
sive hauteur of the aristocratic strawberry, and the 
native refinement of the quietly elegant raspberry. 

^ ^ 

Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, 
and the principle of natural selection ! I should like 
to see a garden let to run in accordance with it. If 
I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free fight, 
in which the strongest specimens only should come to 
maturity, and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly 
see that I should have had a pretty mess of it. It 
would have been a scene of passion and license and 
brutality. The “ pusley ” would have strangled the 
strawberry ; the upright corn, which has now ears to 
hear the guilty beating of the hearts of the children 
who steal the raspberries, would have been dragged 
to the earth by the wandering bean ; the snakegrass 
would have left no place for the potatoes under 
ground; and the tomatoes would have been swamped 
by the lusty weeds. With a firm hand I have had 
to make my own “ natural selection.” 









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<T 


DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 


AUTHOR OF “ REVERIES OF A BACHELOR” AND “ DREAM LIFE.” 



NDER the pen name of “Ik Marvel,” Donald G. Mitchell is among 
the best known literary men of the world. His chief works consist 
of a dozen volumes or more ranging back for fifty years; but readers 
who know the “Reveries of a Bachelor” and “Dream Life,” ]x>ssess 
a clear comprehension of this author. In learning those books they 
have learned him by heart. Except that he has mellowed with age 


there is little change in his charming style from his first book issued in 1847 to his 
last—“American Land and Letters”—which appeared in 1897. 

Washington Irving spoke of being drawn to Donald G. Mitchell, by the qualities 
of head and heart which he found in his writings. No doubt if Irving had named 
these qualities he would have agreed with the general verdict that they consisted 
in a clearness of conception with which he grasped his theme, the faithfulness with 
which his thought pursued it, the sympathy with which he treated it and the quality 
of modesty, grace, dignity and sweetness which characterized his style. Says one 
of his critics: “Mitchell is a man who never stands in front of his subject, and who 
never asks attention to himself. Washington Irving had the same characteristics 
and it was natural that they should be drawn together. In early life, Mitchell 


seems to have been much under Irving. “Dream Life” was dedicated to that 




veteran, and some of the best sketches that can now be found of Irving are in 
Mitchell’s written recollections of him. The disciple however, was not an imitator. 
Mitchell’s papers on “The Squire” and “The Country Church” are as characteristic 
as any thing in the “Sketch Book,” but their writer’s style is his own. 

Donald* G. Mitchell was born in Norwich, Connecticut, April 12,1822. He 
graduated at Yale in 1841 and afterwards worked three years on his grandfather’s 
farm, thus acquiring a taste for agriculture which lias clung to him through life, 
and which shows itself in his “Edgewood” books. His first contributions were 
to the “Albany Cultivator,” a farm journal. He begun the study of law in 1847, 
but abandoned it for literature. 

Mr. Mitchell has been several times abroad, always returning with some¬ 
thing refreshing for his American readers. He has also lectured on literature at 
Yale College. In 1853, he was appointed United States Consul to Venice by 
President Pierce, but resigned after a few months. His home has been, since 1855, 
on his charming country place, “Edgewood,” near New Haven, Connecticut, and 
nearly all his books—except “English Lands and Letters” (1890), and “American 
Lands and Letters” (1897)—are fragrant with the breath of the farm and rural 
scenerv. 


284 
































285 


DONALD G. MITCHELL. 

Mr. Mitchell was married in 1853 to Miss Mary F. Pringle, of Charleston, South 
Carolina, who accompanied him when he went as Consul to Venice. 

Mr. Mitchell filled a number of semi-public positions, and was one of the first 
members of the council of the Yale Art School at its establishment in 1865. He 
was also one of the judges of Industrial Art at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, 
and was United States Commissioner at the Paris Exposition in 1878. His contri¬ 
butions to “The Atlantic Monthly,” to “Harper’s Magazine,” and other periodicals, 
his lectures and addresses on Literature and Agriculture have always been well 
received. 

Among his books not already mentioned are “The Seven Stories with Basement 
and Attic,” a series of tales of travel; “A Single Novel;” “Doctor Johns;” one 
juvenile story “About Old Story-Tellers,” and an elaborate genealogy of his 
mother’s family entitled “The Woodbridge Record.” 




WASHINGTON IRVING. 

(FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO “ DREAM LIFE.”) 


N the summer of 1852 Mr. Irving made a 
stay of a few weeks at Saratoga ; and, by 
ssslll good fortune, I chanced to occupy a room 
upon the same corridor of the hotel, within a few 
doors of his, and shared many of his early morning 
walks to the “ Spring.” What at once struck me 
very forcibly in the course of these walks was the 
rare alertness and minuteness of his observation. 
Not a fair young face could dash past us in its 
drapery of muslin, but the eye of the old gentle¬ 
man—he was then almost seventy—drank in all its 
freshness and beauty, with the keen appetite and the 
graceful admiration of a boy ; not a dowager brushed 
past us, bedizened with finery, but he fastened the 
apparition in his memory with some piquant remark, 
as the pin of an entomologist fastens a gaudy fly. 
No rheumatic old hero-invalid, battered in long wars 
with the doctors, no droll marplot of a boy, could ap¬ 
pear within range, but I could see in the changeful 
expression of my companion the admeasurements 
and quiet adjustment of the appeal which either 
made upon his sympathy or his humor. A flower, 
a tree, a burst of music, a country market man hoist 
upon his wagon of cabbage—all these by turns caught 
and engaged his attention, however little they might 
interrupt the flow of his talk. 

He was utterly incapable of being “lionized.” 
Time and again, under the trees in the court of the 
hotel, did I hear him enter upon some pleasant story, 


lighted up with that rare turn of his eye and by his 
deft expressions; when, as chance acquaintances 
grouped around him, as is the way of watering- 
places, and eager listeners multiplied, his hilarity and 
spirit took a chill from the increasing auditory, and 
drawing abruptly to a close, he would sidle away 
with a friend, and be gone. . . . 

I saw Mr. Irving afterwards repeatedly in New 
York, and passed two delightful days at Sunnyside. 
I can never forget a drive with him on a crisp 
autumn morning through Sleepy Hollow and all the 
notable localities of his neighborhood, in the course 
of which he called my attention, in the most un¬ 
affected and incidental way, to those which had been 
specially illustrated by his pen, and with a rare humor 
recounted to me some of his boyish adventures 
among the old Dutch farmers of that region. 

Most of all it is impossible for me to forget the 
rare kindliness of his manner, his friendly sugges¬ 
tions, and the beaming expression of his eye. I 
met it last at the little stile from which I strolled 
away to the railway station. When I saw the kind 
face again, it was in the coffin at the little church 
where he attended services. But the eyes were 
closed, and the wonderful radiance of expression 
gone. It seemed to me that death never took away 
more from a living face. It was but a cold shadow 
lying there of the man who had taught a nation to 
love him. 













GLIMPSES OF “ DREAM-LIFE ” 


By Ik Marvel 

With original illustrations by Corwin K. Linson. 




“PSHAW ! SAID MY AUNT TAEITHY ” 


Pshaw! —said my Aunt Tabithy—have you not done with dreaming? 

My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most notable person, loves occa¬ 
sionally a quiet bit of satire. And 
when I told her that I was sharpening 
my pen for a new story of those 
dreamy fancies, and half-experiences, 
which lie grouped along the journey¬ 
ing hours of my solitary life, she 
smiled as if in derision. 

It is very idle to get angry with 
a good-natured old lady: I did better 
than this: I made her listen to me. 

Exhausted, do you say, Aunt 
Tabithy? Is life then exhausted, is 
hope gone out, is fancy dead? 

No, no, Aunt Tabithy—this life 
of musing does not exhaust so easily. 

It is like the springs on the farm-land, 
that are fed with all the showers and 

the dews of the year, and that from the narrow fissures of the rock send up 
streams continually. Dream-land will never be exhausted until we enter on 

the land of dreams: and until, in 

• i 'w, f 7 

“shuffling off this mortal coil,” 
thought will become fact and all facts 
will be only thought. 

It was warm weather, and my 
aunt was dozing. “ What is this 
all to be about?’* said she, recover¬ 
ing her knitting-needle. 

“ About love, and toil, and duty, 
and sorrow,” said I. 

My aunt finished the needle she 
was upon—smoothed the stocking- 
leg over her knee, and went on to 
ask me in a very bantering way, if 
my stock of youthful loves was not 
nearly exhausted. 

A better man than myself—if he 
had only a fair share of vanity—• 
would have been nettled at this; and 
I replied somewhat tartly, that I had 

never professed to write my expe* 
286 v 


ISAAC, YOU ARE A SAD FELLOW ,} 













Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 


287 


riences. Life after all is but a bundle 
of hints, each suggesting actual and 
positive development, but rarely reach¬ 
ing it. And as I recall these hints, 
and in fancy, trace them to their is¬ 
sues, I am as truly dealing with life, as 
if my life had dealt them all to me. 

This is what I would be doing in the 
present book;—I would catch up here 
and there the shreds of feeling, which 
the brambles and roughnesses of the 
world have left tangling on my heart, 
and weave them out into those soft and 
perfect tissues, which—if the world had 
been onlyalittle less rough—might now 
perhaps enclose my heart altogether. 

“ Ah,” said my Aunt Tabithy, as 
she smoothed the stocking-leg again, 
with a sigh—“ there is after all but 
one youth-time; and if you put down 
its memories once, you can find no second growth.” 

My Aunt Tabithy was wrong. There is as much growth in the thoughts and 
feelings that run behind us, as in those that run before us. You may make a rich, 
full picture of your childhood to-day; but let the hour go by, and the darkness 
stoop to your pillow with its million shapes of the past, and my word for it, you 
shall have some flash of childhood lighten upon you that was unknown to your 
busiest thought of the morning. 

I know no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, venturesome, mischievous boy, 

than the garret of an old 
family mansion on a day 
of storm. It is a perfect 
field of chivalry. There 
is great fun in groping 
through a tall barrel of 
books and pamphlets, on 
the look-out for startling 
pictures; and there are 
chestnuts in the garret, 
drying, which you have 
discovered on a ledge of 
the chimney; and you 
slide a few into your 
pocket, and munch them 
quietly—giving now and 
then one to Nelly, and 
begging her to keep si¬ 
lent;—for you have a 














288 


Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 




great fear of its being 
forbidden fruit. 

Old family garrets 
have their stock, as I said, 
of cast-away clothes, of 
twenty years gone by; 
and it is rare sport to put 
them on; buttoning in a 
pillow or two for the sake 
of good fulness; and then 
to trick out Nelly in some 
strange -shaped head- 
gear and old-fashioned 
brocade petticoat caught 
up with pins; and in such 
guise, to steal cautiously 
down stairs, and creep slyly into the 
sitting-room—half afraid of a scolding, 
and very sure of good fun;—trying to 
look very sober, and yet almost ready to die with 
the laugh that you know you will make. And your 
mother tries to look harshly at little Nelly for putting 
on her grandmother’s best bonnet; but Nelly’s laugtu 
ing eyes forbid it utterly, and the mother spoils 
all her scolding with a perfect shower of kisses. 

After this, you go marching, very stately, 
into the nursery; and utterly amaze the old 
nurse; and make a deal of wonderment for the 
staring, half-frightened baby, who drops his 
rattle, and makes a bob at you, as if he would 
jump into your waistcoat pocket. 






‘a perfect field of chivalry 


You have looked admiringly many a day up¬ 
on the tall fellows who play at the door of Dr. 
Bidlow’s school; you have looked with rever¬ 
ence. Dr. Bidlow seems to you to belong to a 


-V 

“tricked out” 



race of giants; and yet he is 
a spare, thin man, with a 
hooked nose, a large, flat, gold 
watch-key, a crack in his voice, 
a wig, and very dirty wrist¬ 
bands. 

You, however, come very 
little under his control; you 
enter upon the proud life in 
the small-boys’ department— 
under the dominion of the 
English master. He is a dif- 







Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 


289 





'ir 


LONG, WEARY DAYS OF CONFINEMENT” 


ferent personage from Dr. Bidlovv: 
he is a dapper, little man, who 
twinkles his eye in a peculiar fash¬ 
ion, and steps very springily around 
behind the benches, glancing now 
and then at the books—cautioning 
one scholar about his dog’s ears, 
and startling another from a doze 
by a very loud and odious snap of 
his forefinger upon the boy’s head. 

There are some tall trees that 
overshadow an angle of the school- 

house ; and the 
larger scholars 
play surprising 
gymnastic 
tricks upon 
their lowerlimbs. 

In time, however, you get to performing some modest 
experiments yourself upon the very lowest limbs, —taking 
care to avoid the observation of the larger boys, who else 
might laugh at you: you especially avoid the notice of 
one stout fellow in pea-green breeches, who is a sort of 
“bully” among the small boys. 

One day you are well in the tops of the trees, and be¬ 
ing dared by the boys below, you venture higher—higher 
than any boy has gone before. You feel very proud, so 
you advance cautiously out upon the limb: it bends and 
sways fearfully with your weight: presently it cracks: you 
— try to return, but it is too late; then comes a sense of 
' dizziness—a succession of quick blows, and a dull, heavy 
crash! 

After this, come those long, weary days of confinement, 
when you lie still, through all the hours of noon, look¬ 
ing out upon the cheerful 
sunshine, only through the 
windows of your little room. 

Yet it seems a grand thing 
to have the whole house¬ 
hold attendant upon you; 
and when you groan with 
pain, you are sure of meet¬ 
ing sad, sympathizing looks. 


‘‘OLD BID” 


‘‘startling another from a doze” 


To visit, is a great thing 
in the boy-calendar:—to go 
away on a visit in a coach, 
with a trunk, and a great- 
l 9 


♦ 












290 


Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 



“and eat a dinner in a tavern” 


coat, and an umbrella:— 
this is large! As you jour¬ 
ney on, after bidding your 
friends adieu, and as you 
see fences and houses to 
which you have not been 
used, you think them very 
odd indeed; but it occurs 
to you, that the geogra¬ 
phies speak of very various 
national characteristics, 

and you are greatly gratified with this opportunity of verifying 
your study. 

Your old aunt, whom you visit, you think wears a very 
queer cap, being altogether different from that of the old nurse, or of Mrs. Boyne, 
—Madge’s mother. As for acquaintances, you fall in the very first day with a tall 
boy next door, called Nat, which seems an extraordinary name. Besides, he has 

traveled; and as he sits with you 
on the summer nights under the 
linden trees, he tells you gor¬ 
geous stories of the things he has 
seen. He has made the voyage 
to London; and he talks about the 
ship (a real ship) and starboard and 
larboard, and the spanker, in a way 

» 

quite surprising; and he takes the stern 
oar in the little skiff, when you row off in the 
cove abreast of the town, in a most seaman¬ 
like way. 

Besides Nat, there is a girl lives over the opposite side of the way, named 
Jenny, with an eye as black as a coal. She has any quantity of toys, and she has 
an odd old uncle, who sometimes makes you stand up together, and then marries 
you after his fashion,—much to the amusement of a grown¬ 
up housemaid, whenever she gets a peep at the performance. 

And it makes you somewhat proud to hear her called your 
wife; and you wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won’t be 
true some day or other. 

Jenny is romantic, and talks of Thaddeus of Warsaw in 
a very touching manner, and promises 
to lend you the book. She folds billets 
in a lover’s fashion, and practices love- 
knots upon her bonnet strings. She 
looks out of the corners of her eyes very 
often, and sighs. She is frequently by 
herself, and pulls flowers to pieces. 

All this time, for you are making 
your visit a very long one, so that au¬ 
tumn has come, and the nights are grow- “it IS rather a pretty name to write” 



“away on a visit in a coach” 




































































































































Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 


291 


ing cool, and Jenny and your¬ 
self are transferring your lit¬ 
tle coquetries to the chimney- 
corner ;— poor Charlie lies 
sick at home. Boyhood, thank 
Heaven, does not suffer se¬ 
verely from sympathy when 
the object is remote. 

It is on a frosty, bleak 
evening, when you are playing 
with Nat, that the letter 
reaches you which says Char¬ 
lie is growing worse, and that 
you must come to your home. 

It is quite dark when you 
reach home, but you see the 
bright reflection of a fire with¬ 
in, and presently at the open door Nelly clapping her hands for welcome. But 
there are sad faces when you enter. Your mother folds you to her heart; but 
at your first noisy outburst of joy, puts her finger on her lip, and whispers poor 
Charlie’s name. The Doctor you see, too, slipping softly out of the bed-room 
door with glasses in his hand; and—you hardly know how—your spirits grow sad, 
and your heart gravitates to the heavy air of all about you. 

You drop to sleep after that day's fatigue, with singular and perplexed fancies 
haunting you; and when you wake up with a shudder in the middle of the night, 
you get up stealthily and creep down stairs; the bed-room door stands open, a little 

lamp is flickering on the hearth, and 
the gaunt shadow of the bedstead lies 
dark upon the ceiling. Your mother 
is in her chair, with her head upon 
her hand—though it is long after mid¬ 
night. The Doctor is standing with 
his back toward you, and looks very 
solemn as he takes out his watch. He 
is not counting Charlie’s pulse, for he 
has dropped his hand; and it lies care¬ 
lessly, but oh, how thin ! over the 
edge of the bed. 

He shakes his head mournfully at 
your mother; and she springs forward, 
and lays her fingers upon the forehead 
of the boy, and passes her hand over 
his mouth. 

“ Is he asleep, Doctor?” she says, 
in a tone you do not know. 

“Dear Madam, he will never 
waken in this world.” 

There is no cry—only a bowing 




“who sometimes makes you stand up together 


















292 


Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 




down of your mother’s head 
upon the body of poor, dead 
Charlie!—and only when you 
see her form shake and quiver 
with the deep, smothered sobs, 
your crying bursts forth loud 
and strong. 

The Doctor lifts you in his 
arms, that you may see—that 
pale head,—those blue eyes all 

sunken,— 
_ that flaxen 




hair gone, 


—those 
white 
lips 


i »V*. H 


LISTENING ATTENTIVELY TO SOME GRIEVOUS COMPLAINT 


A 




•' ■ 


pinched and hard!—Never, never, will the boy forget 
his first terrible sight of Death! 

Frank has a grandfather living in the country, 
a good specimen of the old-fashioned New E :gland 
farmer. He is a Justice of the Peace, and many are the 
country courts that you peep upon, with Frank, from 
the doorof the greatdining-room. Youwatchcuriously 
the old gentleman, sitting in his big arm-chair, with 
his spectacles in their silver case at his elbow, and his 
snuff-box in hand, listening attentively to some griev¬ 
ous complaint; you see him ponder deeply—with a 
pinch of snuff to aid his judgment,—and you listen 
with intense admiration, as he gives a loud, prepara- 
Ahem,” and clears away the intricacies of the 
case with a sweep of that strong practical sense which 
distinguishes the New England farmer,—getting at 
the veryhingeof thematter,withoutanyconsciousness 

' r " 


r- ... 


is' ■ 






■si: 


“SOME OF BIDLOW’S BOYS ” 





























V 


Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 


293 



of his own precision, and satis- 
fyingthedefendantbytheclear- 
ness of his talk, as much as by 
the leniency of his judgment. 

He farms some fifteen hundred 
acres,—“suitably divided,’’ 
as the old-school agricul¬ 
turists say, into “wood¬ 
land, pasture, and tillage.’’ The farm-house, a large ir¬ 
regularly built mansion of wood, stands upon a shelf of 
the hills looking southward, and is shaded by century-old 

oaks. The barns and out¬ 
buildings are grouped in a 
brown phalanx a little to 
the northward of the dwelling. 
Between them a high timber 
gate opens upon the scattered 
pasture-lands of the hills. 



W/f vy ■' y 

“some tidy old lady in black” 


Opposite to this, and across 
the farmyard, which is 
the lounging-place of 
scores of red-necked “a squire” 

turkeys, and of ma¬ 
tronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, 
another gate of similar pretensions opens upon 
the wide meadow-land. 

So it is, that as you lie there upon the 
sunny greensward, at the old Squire’s door, you muse upon the time when some 
rich-lying land, with huge granaries and cozy old mansion sleeping under the 
trees, shall be yours;—when the brooks shall water your meadows, 
and come laughing down your pasture-lands;—when the clouds 
shall shed their spring fragrance upon your 
lawns, and the daisies bless your paths. You 
will then be a Squire, with your cane, your 
lean-limbed hound, your stocking-leg of specie, 
and your snuff-box. You will be the happy 
and respected husband of some tidy old lady 
in black and spectacles,—a little phthisicky, 
like Frank’s grandmother,—and an accom¬ 
plished cook of stewed pears,and Johnny-cakes! 


The country church is 







i 


























294 


Glimpses of “Dream-Life’' 


a square old building of wood, 
without paint or decoration, 
and of that genuine, Puritanic 
stamp, which is now fast giving 
way to Greek porticos, and to 
cockney towers. The un¬ 
painted pews are ranged in 
square forms, and by age have 
gained the color of those 
fragmentary wrecks of cigar- 
boxes, which you see upon the 
top shelves in the bar-rooms 
of country taverns. The min¬ 
ister’s desk is lofty, and has 
once been honored with a coat¬ 
ing of paint;—as well as the 

huge sounding-board, which, to your great amazement, r 
protrudes from the wall, at a very dangerous angle of in- tfflj 
clination, over the speaker's head. 

The singing has a charm for you. There is a long, 
thin-faced, flax-haired man, who carries a tuning-fork in 


Kr ' v ' 

'‘S 








THE CHOIR 


his waistcoat pocket, and who leads the choir. His po¬ 
sition is in the very front rank of gallery benches, facing the desk; and by the 
time the old clergyman has read two verses of the psalm, the country chorister 
turns around to his little group of aids—consisting of the blacksmith, a carroty 
headed school-master, two women in snuff-colored silks, and a girl in a pink bonnet, 
somewhat inclined to frivolity,—to announce the tune. 

This being done in an authoritative manner, 
he lifts his long music-book,—glances again at 
his little company, clears his throat by a powerful 
“Ahem,” followed by a powerful use of a ban¬ 
danna pocket-handkerchief,—draws out his tun¬ 
ing fork, and waits for the parson to close 
his reading. He now reviews once more his 
company,—throws a reproving glance 
— at the young woman in the pink hat, 
who at the moment is biting off a 
stout bunch of fennel,—lifts 
his music-book, thumps up¬ 
on the rail with his fork, 
listens keenly, gives a slight 
“Ahem,’’ falls into the 
cadence,—swells into a strong 
crescendo ,—catches at the first 


word of the line, as if he were 
afraid it might get away,—turns 
to his company,—lifts hismusic- 
“fat old ladies in iron spectacles * book with spirit,—gives it a 




























































Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 


295 


powerful slap with the disen¬ 
gaged hand, and, with a ma¬ 
jestic toss of the head, soars 
away, with half the women be¬ 
low straggling on in his wake, 
into some such brave old mel¬ 
ody as—L itchfield! 

Being a visitor, and in the 
Squire’s pew, you are naturally 
an object of considerable attention to the girls about your 
as well as to a great many fat old ladies in iron 
spectacles, who mortify you excessively by patting you 
under the chin after church; and 
insist upon mistaking you 
for Frank; and force up¬ 
on you very dry cook- 



THE DEACON 


ies, spiced with cara¬ 
way seeds. 

The farmers you have a high respect 
for;—particularly for one weazen-faced old 
gentleman in a brown surtout, who brings his 
whip into church with him, who sings in a 
very strong voice, and who drives a span of 
gray colts. Another townsman, who attracts 
your attention is a stout deacon, who before 
entering always steps around the corner of 
the church and puts his hat upon the ground 
to adjust his wig in a quiet way. He then 
marches up the broad aisle in a stately man¬ 
ner, and plants his hat, and a big pair of 



“in tones of tender admonition ” 





“the old men gather on the sunny side of the building 


















































































































































































296 


Glimpses of “Dream-Life” 




buckskin mittens, on the little table 
under the desk. When he is fairly 
seated in his corner of the pew, with 
his elbow upon the top-rail—almost 
the only man who can comfortably 
reach it,—you observe that he spreads 
his brawny fingers over his scalp, in 
an exceedingly cautious manner; and you innocently think again, that it is very 
hypocritical in a deacon to be pretending to lean upon his hand when he is only 
Keeping his wig straight. 

After the morning service, they have an “hour’s intermission,” as the preacher 
calls it; during which the old men gather on a sunny side of the building, and, 
after shaking hands all around, and asking after the “folks” at home, they enjoy 
a quiet talk about the crops, branching off, now and then, it may be, into politics. 

Little does the 
boy know, as the tide 
of years drifts by, 
floating him out in¬ 
sensibly from the har¬ 
bor of his home upon 
the great sea of life, 
—what joys, what op¬ 
portunities, what af¬ 
fections, are slipping 
from him. 

But now , you are 
there. The fire-light 
glimmers upon the 
walls of your cher¬ 
ished home, like the 
Vestal fire of old up- 

.. on the figures of 

“the firelight glimmers upon the walls of your home” . 

adoring virgins, or 

like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense bore hearts to heaven. The big 
chair of your father is drawn to its wonted corner by the chimney-side; his head, 
just touched with gray, lies back upon its oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon his 
knee, looking up for some reply to her girlish questionings. Opposite, sits your 
mother; her figure is thin, her look cheerful, yet subdued;—her arm perhaps 




resting on your -shoulder, as she talks to you in tones of tender admonition, of 



the days that are to come. 

The cat is purring on the hearth; 
the clock is ticking on the mantel. 
The great table in the middle of the 
room, with its books and work, waits 
only for the lighting of the evening 
lamp, to see a return to its stores of 
embroidery, and of story. 










# 

* 

* 


THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 


PATRIOT AND MAN OF LETTERS. 



HOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON is one of the group of men 
of whom their countrymen should be most proud. He has taken a 
noble part in the battles on behalf of freedom, which the last half- 
century has seen, and everywhere has borne himself with a nobility, 
a devotion and a courage worthy of all praise. The man .who was 
driven from his church because he preached the freedom of the 
slaves, who sat with Parker and Phillips under indictment for murder for their part 
in attempting to rescue a fugitive slave, who was colonel of the first regiment of 
freed slaves mustered into the army of the United States, who bravely fought and 
patiently suffered for the cause of the Union ; surely this man, if he had no other 
claims upon our respect and attention, should hold a high place in the hearts of his 
fellows. 

Colonel Higginson is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 1847, when 
he was twenty-four years old, became pastor of a Congregational Church in New- 
buryport, Massachusetts. Here his anti-slavery preaching allowed him to remain 
but three years. From 1852 until 1858 he was pastor of a free church in Worces¬ 
ter, after which he left the ministry and devoted himself to literature. During all 
this time his activity in the anti-slavery agitation was frequently getting him into 
trouble, and, with his friends who participated in the attempted rescue of Anthony 
Burns, he was discharged from custody only through a flaw in the indictment. He 
took part in the organization of the bands of free-state, emigrants to Kansas, and 
was personally acquainted with John Brown. With his regiment of colored troops, 
he took possession of Jacksonville, Florida ; but was wounded in 1863 and was 
compelled to resign from the army. He has been an earnest advocate of equal 
suffrage for men and women and of the higher education for both sexes^. He. has 
served in his State Legislature and as a member of the State Board of Education. 

Colonel Higginson’s contributions to literature consist largely of volumes of essays 
that originally appeared in the Atlantic JMonthly oi otliei penodicals, and his¬ 
torical and biographical work. Some of his best known books are ‘ Atlantic 
Essays“ Young Folk’s History of the United States“ Young Folk’s Book of 
American Explorers;” “ Short Stories of American Authors; ALaiger Histoiy 
of the United States ;” “The Monarch of Dreams ;” and “Brief Biographies of Euro¬ 
pean Statesmen.” Besides these, he has translated his Young hoiks Histoi> of 
the United States ” into German and French for publication in those languages, and 

297 






























298 


THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON^ 


lias also published a number of English translations of modern and ancient classics. 
Colonel Higginson is one of our most popular writers, particularly upon American 
history, and his service to the cause of American letters has been no less distin¬ 
guished than his share in the great victory which made our country in truth the 
land of the free. 

“A PURITAN SUNDAY MORNING."* 

FROM “ ATLANTIC ESSAYS.” 


T is nine o’clock upon a summer Sunday 
morning, in the year sixteen hundred and 
something. The sun looks down brightly 
on a little forest settlement, around whose expanding 
fields the great ikmerican wilderness recedes each day, 
withdrawing its bears and wolves and Indians into 
an ever remoter distance—not yet so far removed but 
a stout wooden gate at the end of the village street 
indicates that there is danger outside. It would 
look very busy and thriving in this little place to-day 
but for the Sabbath stillness which broods over every¬ 
thing with almost an excess of calm. Even the 
smoke ascends more faintly than usual from the 
chimneys of the numerous log-huts and these few 
framed houses, and since three o’clock yesterday 
afternoon not a stroke of this world’s work has been 
done. Last night a Preparatory Lecture w r as held, 
and now comes the consummation of the whole 
week’s life, in the solemn act of worship. In which 
settlement of the great Massachusetts Colony is the 
great ceremonial to pass before our eyes ? If it be 
Cambridge village, a drum is sounding its peaceful 
summons to the congregation. If it be Salem village, 
a bell is sounding its more ecclesiastic peal, and a red 
flag is simultaneously hung forth from the meeting¬ 
house, like the auction-flag of later periods. If it be 
Haverhill village, then Abraham Tyler has been blow¬ 
ing his horn assiduously for half an hour—a service 
for which Abraham, each year, receives a half pound 
of pork from every family in town. 

Be it drum, bell, or horn that gives the summons, 
we will draw near to this important building, the 
centre of the village, the one public edifice-meeting¬ 
house, town-house, schoolhouse, watch-house, all in 
one. So important is it, that no one can legally 
dwell more than half a mile from it. And yet the 
people ride to “ meeting,” short though the distance 
be, for at yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from 


behind her husband; and has it not, moreover, 
been found needful to impose a fine of forty shillings 
on- fast trotting to and fro ? All sins are not modern 
ones, young gentlemen. 

We approach nearer still, and come among the 
civic institutions. This is the pillory, yonder, are the 
stocks, and there is a large wooden cage, a terror to 
evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the 
meeting-house is a high wooden paling, to which the 
law permits citizens to tie their horses, provided it be 
not done too near the passageway. For at that 
opening stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of armor 
which is painted black, and cost the town twenty- 
four shillings by the bill. He bears also a heavy 
match-lock musket; his rest, or iron fork, is stuck 
in the ground, ready to support the weapon ; and he 
is girded with his bandolier, or broad leather belt, 
which sustains a sword and a dozen tin cartridge- 
boxes. 

* * -fc * ^ >jc :f: 

0 the silence of this place of worship, after the 
solemn service sets in ! “ People do not sneeze or 
cough here in public assemblies,” says one writer 
triumphantly, “so much as in England.” The 
warning caution, “ Be short,” which the minister has 
inscribed above his study-door, claims no authority 
over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing, 
and no one thinks it long •, for, indeed, at prayer- 
meetings four persons will sometimes pray an hour 
each—one with confession, one with private petitions, 
a third with petitions for Church and Kingdom, and 
a fourth with thanksgiving—each theme being con¬ 
scientiously treated by itself. Then he may preach 
his hour, and, turning his hour-glass, may say—but 
that he cannot foresee the levity to be born in a 
later century with Mather Byles—“ Now, my hearers, 
we will take another glass.” 



* Copyright, Geo. R. Shepard. 











HAMILTON W. MABIE. 



THE MODERN CRITIC. 

N the modern school of literary critics, whose best representatives are 
Coleridge, Carlyle, Arnold, Lowell and Stedman, Hamilton W. 
Mabie h as a prominent place. His aim has been, as is the aim of 
all great criticism, not only to give an estimate of a man’s work, but 
to show the man’s soul. He was born at Cold Springs, on the 
banks of the Hudson, of a family of culture. He was prepared for 
college under a private tutor, and graduated at Williams College in the Class of 
’67—a class which numbered many men of farpe. 

From boyhood Maybie has been a great reader, and he is familiar with the classics 
of all literatures, as well as a student of contemporaneous literature. 

After a course of law at Columbia University his literary tendencies drew him 
into his natural field and away from a profession uncongenial to him. In 1879 he 
took a position on the staff of the “ Christian Union,” which under its new name, 
the “Outlook,” under the joint editorship of Mabie and Lyman Abbott, has taken 
a prominent place among the foremost religious journals of the world. “My Study 
Fire,” which expresses our author’s ideas of the function of literature, and the atti¬ 
tude and spirit of the literary man, first appeared as a series of articles in this 
religious journal. 

In the last few years Mr. Mabie has taken a prominent place on the platform on 
literary and educational subjects, though he scrupulously keeps his public speaking 
subordinate to his writing. His addresses are marked with elegance, grace, and all 
the fruits of culture, and they show a profound study of the problems of life and 
spirit. He has a beautiful home at Summit, New Jersey, an enviable site for a 
writer, with the multitudinous charms of nature without and the gathered wisdom 
of the world’s great thinkers within. 

He is a man of robust life, of clear, healthy mind and of high faith. He has 
declared that “Skepticism is the root of all evil in us and in our arts. We do not 
believe enough in God, in ourselves, and in the divine laws under which we live. 
Great art involves great faith—a clear, resolute, victorious insight into and grasp of 
tilings, a belief real enough in 

‘ The mighty hopes which make us men ’ 

to inspire and sustain heroic tasks,” a declaration quite typical of all his thought. 

299 



























COUNTRY SIGHTS AND SOUNDS 
By Hamilton W. Mabie 


Illustrated from original photographs by Co7irad Baer. 

At the end of February the observer begins to see the faint forerunners of 
spring. The willow shows signs of renewing its freshness, and the long stretch of 
■cold, with brilliant or steely skies, is interrupted by days full of an indescribable 
softness. It is almost pathetic to note with what joy the spirit of man takes cog 
nizance of these first hints of the color, the bloom and the warmth slowly creeping 
up to the southern horizon-line. For we are children of the sun, and, much 
as we love our hearthstones, we are never quite at home unless we have the free¬ 
dom of the out-of-door world. Winter finds its great charm in the ingathering of 
the memories of the summer that is gone and in the anticipation of the summer that 
is at hand. Half the cheer of the blazing log lies in the air of the woods which it 
brings into the narrow room. 

To be out of doors is the normal condition of the natural man. At some period 
of our ancestral life, so dim in our thought but so potential in our temper, dis¬ 
position and physique, we have all lived, so to speak, in the open air; and although 
city-born and city-bred, we turn to the country with an instinctive feeling that we 
belong there. There are a few pockneys to whom the sound of Bow Bells is 



ON THE FARM IN CANADA 

300 












Country Sights and Sounds 


301. 


sweeter man the note of the bluebird, 
the resonant clarion of chanticleer or the 
far-off bleating of sheep; but to the im¬ 
mense majority of men these noises are 
like sounds that were familiar in child¬ 
hood. I have sometimes thought that the 
deepest charm of the country lies in the 
fact that it was the home and play-ground 
of the childhood of the race, and, however 
long some of us have been departed from 
it, it stirs within us rare memories and as¬ 
sociations which are imperishable. The 
lowing of cattle coming home at night¬ 
fall; the bleating of sheep on the hillside 
pastures; the crowing of the cock, are 
older than any human speech which now 
exists. They were ancient sounds before 
our oldest histories were written. I know 
of nothing sweeter to the man who comes 
out of the heat and noise and dust of the 
city in midsummer than to be awakened 
on the first morning by that irregular 
tinkle of bells which accompanies the early processions of the cows. One may 
never have come nearer a farm than his great-grandfather, but that sound makes 
him feel as if he were at home after some long and arduous absence. 

And one has but to put into his pocket a few of those clever newspapers which 
satirize society people in spirited and well-drawn lines, and carry them into the 
country, to discover that the picturesque flees the city and loves the country; so 
far, that is, as people are concerned. There is certainly something wrong with 




IMMIGRANT WOMEN HOEING POTATOES 



























Country Sights and Sounds 


WAITING FOR MILKING-TIME 


our modern dress; it is impos* 
sible to discover anything sug¬ 
gestive or poetic in it, or to 
make any thing artistic out of 
it. Well-dressed individual 
men and women are often 
attractive to the eye; but 
when this is true it is because 
the charm of the person sur¬ 
vives the monotonous uniform¬ 
ity of good clothes. Nothing 
can make the evening dress in 
which man extinguishes his 
personality either significant 
or artistic; but the man in 
overalls and shirt-sleeves is 
often a strikingly picturesque figure. Country life as a whole is steeped in the pic¬ 
turesque, in spite of the machines which so largely take the place of the old-time 
hand labor. One must go to the fields to find the poetry of human occupation; 
the man in the street is often interesting but he rarely stirs the imagination; the 
man in the fields constantly sets the imagination loose. What elemental strength 
and meaning are expressed in those peasant-figures of Millet? They belong to 
the world in which they toil; 
they disclose their identity 
with it; they express some¬ 
thing of its meaning in their 
vigorous or bent forms. 

The entire life of the field 
is poetic in the true sense; 
from the hour when the last 
snow begins to melt to the 
hour when the last sheaf of 
grain goes creaking through 
the bars. The sower, moving 
across the open furrows, has a 
kind of antique picturesque¬ 
ness; he seems to have step¬ 
ped out of that ancient frieze 
with which the earliest habits 
encircled the oldest days. He 
expresses freedom, virility, 
personality in every move¬ 
ment ; the eye follows him 
with a deepening impression 
that here is something native 
and original: a man in first¬ 
hand relations with his world. 

The reaper who follows him 


AFTER WORK 
















Country Sights and Sounds 


303 






A WINTER EVENING ON THE FARM 


when sun and cloud have 
done their share, is not less 
striking and effective; and 
when the sheaves lie in rows 
or piles on the freshly cut 
stubble, the slow-moving, 
noisily creaking wagon, con¬ 
stantly pausing to take on 
its ripe load, seems a fit ac¬ 
cessory in the staging of this 
pastoral drama. The fact 
that this poetry of motion 
is bound to toil so arduous 
and exacting that it often 
becomes a kind of relentless 
drudgery, is full of signifi¬ 
cance to those who believe 
that beauty is not esoteric, but the affluence of universal life in its normal relations 
and occupations. 

The sights and sounds of the farm are not only full of interest, but that inter¬ 
est is deepened by their constant recurrence. The horses at the trough; the 
sheep beside the stream as placid as themselves, or on the green uplands; the cows 
stolidly biding the coming of afternoon under the trees, or standing knee-deep in 

the cool brooks; the clucking 
of hens and their bustling leis¬ 
ure ; the going out of the work¬ 
ers, with implements, seed, 
machines, wagons, and their 
return at sunset; the stir of the 
morning, the hush of the even¬ 
ing; what a world of homely, 
wholesome life is revealed in 
these old-time doings and hap¬ 
penings of the seasons and the 
life on the farm. 

But the farm is often only r. 
unit of measurement, a term of 
individual possession; there is 
something greater; there is the 
country. Beyond the fields 
there is the landscape, and 
above them there is the sky; 
and every farm fits into these 
wider relations and is part of 
the larger whole. The woods, 
cool and silent; the spring hid¬ 
den from the sun by overhang- 

SUNDAY AFTERNOON '"S treeS 311(1 f ™" 1 Str 3 n S e ^ 





















304 


Country Sights and Sounds 


by moss-grown rocks; the brook where 
it runs noiselessly in a shadow so deep at 
noon that one bathes his eyes in it after 
the glare of the world; the old mill, de¬ 
serted by man but loyally served by the 
stream that flows through the decaying 
sluice and over the wheel that turns no 
more; the quiet hilltop, above which the 
whole country sleeps on summer after¬ 
noons;—these are all simply extensions 
of the farm. The boys know them on 
holidays; the older people are drawn to 



CHURNING IN THE BARN 


for they are, one and all, places of si¬ 
lence and solitude. 

The fever of this our life, and the 
tumult of it, vanish on the invisible 
boundaries of these ancient sanctuaries 
of nature. It is not difficult to under¬ 
stand the charm of these places for tirecj 
and worn souls; for it is to such places 
that exhausted men and women invari¬ 
ably turn. No one with a rich intel¬ 
lectual and spiritual nature, can keep in 
perfect health without a eood deal of 



A SUNNY PLAY-GROUND 


them in those infrequent hours when 
the pressure of work is lightened; the 
man who is getting city sights and 
sounds out of head and heart knows 
and loves them. The very thought of 
them brings refreshment and repose; 



THE OLD MILL 















Country Sights and Sounds 


305 


solitude and silence. We come 
to know ourselves and the 
world in the deeper ways only 
when we are apart from the 
rush of things. It is only 
when traffic ceases and the 
dust is laid that the landscape 
becomes clear and complete to 
the pedestrian. The quiet of 
the woods, the cool note of the 
mountain streams, the silence 
of the summits, represent, not 
the luxuries and pleasures of 
a rich life, but its necessities. 

To the townsman these outly¬ 
ing provinces of the farm are even more important than are the well-tilled acres. 

Some day some man or woman will write a luminous book on the education of 
country life; the training of the eye, the ear, the hand, the unconscious enrichment 
of the senses and of the mind which are effected by its sights and sounds. There 
has never been in the long history of education, a better school for the open-minded, 
imaginative boy or girl than the farm. Every day sets its tasks, every task teaches 
its lessons; and nature stands looking over the student’s shoulder and quietly 

whispering some of her deep¬ 
est secrets to her fortunate 
child. 

For surely it is a great 
piece of good fortune to grow 
up in a wise, generous home 
in the country; to be young 

with all manner of four-footed 

/ 

beasts and fowls of the air, 
and grow up with them; to 
stumble over the roots of trees 
when one is beginning to walk; 
to hear the brooks chatter be¬ 
fore one knows how to chatter 
himself; to awake in the stir 
of the morning, when the 
whole world seems to be go¬ 
ing to work, and to fall asleep 
when the world comes troop¬ 
ing home, dusty and tired. 

To see and hear these out¬ 
door sights and sounds is to 
be born into vital relations 
with man’s natural back¬ 
ground and to come uncon¬ 
sciously into possession of 




MAPLE-SUGAR TIME 






















306 


Country Sights and Sounds 





m*. 


a Si, ■>'- > f 

-*» «» «■ -x *«* ^ „ 


.~j;» 

SfesP 




THE BLACK SHEEP 


quaintance of nature in childhood than 
in those later years which bring “ the 
philosophic mind,” but which leave the 
senses untrained for that instinctive 
observation which enables the boy to 
see without knowing that he sees. 

John Burroughs has given us a char¬ 
ming description of the joys of boy¬ 
hood on a farm, and has perhaps uncon¬ 
sciously betrayed the secret of his own 
extraordinary familiarity with the out- 
of-doors world. No knowledge is quite" 
so much a part of ourselves as that 
which we gain without conscious effort; 
which we breathe in with the morning 
air of life. 

The Hindoos have an idiomatic 


some of the greatest truths which 
life has to teach. It is also to be 
born on intimate terms with blue¬ 
birds and cherries! 

“ If you want to know where 
the biggest cherries are to be 
found,” said Goethe,“consult the 
boys and the blackbirds. ” There 
is a natural affinity between the 
two, and the boy who does not 
grow up in natural relationship 
with birds and trees suffers a loss 
of privilege which can never be 
entirely made up. For it is a 
great deal easier to make the ac- 


■ 






THE MILL-POND 


NOON IN THE SHEEP-LOT 


word or phrase for a walk be¬ 
fore breakfast, which may be 
translated, “ eating the morn¬ 
ing air. ” 

The boy on the farm sees 
nature before breakfast, wher. 
senses and mind and heart arc 
on the alert, when experience 
has not brought sophistication 
with it, and when sensation 
still keeps its pristine fresh¬ 
ness. 

The healthy boy is one 
great appetite for sights and 
sounds, and nothing escapes 
him. He knows every path 



















Country Sights and Sounds 


307 


through the woods, every pool in the 
brook, every cavern in the hills, every 
sequestered hollow where the noise 
of the world is softened into the si¬ 
lence of rustling leaves and murmur¬ 
ing streams. One of the most eru¬ 
dite of American scholars, whose large 
learning has not smothered the in¬ 
stincts of his youth, declares that he 
is never entirely happy until he stands 
barefooted in the old fields. 

Nature’s true lovers perceive this, 
and demand that the companion 




PICKING DAISIES 


*vhom he takes into the wilderness 
with him shall be of the right sort; 
me who, as Burroughs says, will 
not “stand between you and that 
vhich you seek. ’’ 

“I want for companion, ” he con¬ 
tinues, 4 ^ dog or a boy, or a person 
who has the virtues of dogs and boys 
—transparency, good-nature, curi¬ 
osity, open sense, and a nameless 
quality that is akin to trees, and 
growths, and the inarticulate forces 
of nature. With him you are alone 
and yet you have company; you 
are free; you feel no disturbing ele¬ 
ment; the influences of nature 
stream through and around him; 
he is a good conductor of the subtle 
fluid. 

“ The quality or qualification I 
refer to belongs to most persons who 


spend their lives in the open air— 
to soldiers, hunters, fishers, laborers, 
and to artists and poets of the right 
sort. ” 

There is something incommun¬ 
icable in such a fellowship with na¬ 
ture, which dates back to the time 
when the boyfound in her hischosen 
playmate, and which still keeps up 
the old game of hide and seek even 
when his methods have become 
scientific and the result of his search 
is a contribution to knowledge. 



MAKING FRIENDS 





















EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 

POET AND CRITIC ; AUTHOR OF “ THE VICRTORIAN POETS.” 

URING the year 1859, two poems were published in the New York 
Tribune which made genuine sensations. They were so unlike in 
subject and treatment that no one would have guessed they emanated 
from the same brain and were penned by the same hand. The first, 
entitled “ The Diamond Wedding,” was a humorous thrust of ridicule 
at the “parade” made in the papers over the lavish and expensive 
jewels and other gifts presented by a wealthy Cuban to his bride—a young lady of 
New York. This poem, when published, called forth a challenge from the irate 
father of the lady; but, fortunately, a duel was somehow averted. 

The other poem, “ How Old Brown Took Harper’s Ferry,” recounted the incident 
of that stern old abolitionist boldly marching with a few men into Virginia and 
capturing the town of Harper’s Ferry. There was no American poet who might 
not have felt proud of this production. Bayard Taylor was so pleased with the 
genius manifested in both these poems that he sought the author’s acquaintance and 
introduced him to R. H. Stoddard, who in turn, after examining a collection of his 
verses, recommended them for publication to Charles Scribner, who issued them the 
next year (18G0) under the title of “Poems, Lyric and Idylic.”—Thus was Mr. 
Stedman introduced into the literary world. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman is a native of Connecticut. He was born in the city 
of Hartford on the eighth day of October, 1833,—and comes of a good family of 
some poetic reputation. Rev. Aaron Cleveland, one of his ancestors, is said to have 
been a poet. Arthur Cleveland Cox, well known as a religious writer of verse, was 
his cousin. His mother was herself a poet, and also the author of the tragedy 
“ Bianco Caprello.” When Stedman was two years of age he was sent to live with 
his grand-uncle, James Stedman, a jurist and scholar, who looked carefully after the 
early education of his nephew. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to Yale College, 
where he was among the foremost in English composition and Greek. But it is 
said that for some disobedience of the discipline of the institution, he fell under the 
censure of the college management and left without graduating. The University 
afterward, however, enrolled him among the alumni of 1853 with the degree of 
Master of Arts. 

Upon leaving Yale, at the age of nineteen, Stedman took the management of a 
newspaper at Norwich, and the next year married a Connecticut girl and became 
owner of the Winsted Herald , when he was only twenty-one. Under his manage- 

308 



























EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 


309 


ment, this paper soon rose to be one of the most important of the political papers of 
the State. Three years later we find him writing on the “ New York Tribune,” 
where lie obtained a foot-hold in literature, as we have already indicated by the 
publication of the two poems above mentioned. 

When the “ World ” was started, in the winter of 1860, Mr. Stedman engaged 
with that journal and was editor of it when the news came over the wires that Fort 
Sumter had been fired upon. He wrote a poem on the occasion which was, perhaps, 
the first poem inspired by the war between the states. Soon after this Mr. Sted¬ 
man went to Wasliington as the army correspondent of the “ World.” He was at 
the first battle of Bull’s Bun and published a long and graphic letter in the 
“ World ” about the defeat of the Union troops which he witnessed. This letter was 
the talk of the town for days and altogether has been pronounced the best single 
letter written during the whole war. 

Before the close of the war, Mr. Stedman resigned his position as editor and 
entered the office of Attorney General Bates at Washington ; but in January, 1864, 
he returned with his family to New York and published his second volume of 
poems entitled, “ Alice of Monmouth, An Idyl of the Great War, and Other Poems,” 
which may be described as a little poetic novel. The opening scene is laid in Mon¬ 
mouth County, New Jersey ; the later ones on the battle fields of Virginia. 

The titles and dates of Mr. Stedman’s other books are as follows : “ The Blame¬ 
less Prince, and other Poems ” (1869); “ Poetical Works ” (1873); “ Victorian 
Poets” (1875) ; “ Hawthorne and Other Poems” (1877); “ Lyrics and Idyls, with 
Other Poems” (1879); the “Poems of Austin Dobson,” with an introduction 
(1880); “Poets of America” (1886), and with Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, he 
edited “A Library of American Literature” (11 vols., 1888—1890). 

Many people entertain the notion that a man cannot be at one and the same time, 
a poet and a man of business. This is a mistake. Fitz Green Hallack was for 
many years a competent clerk of John Jacob Astor; Charles Sprague was for forty 
years teller and cashier in a Boston bank ; Samuel Rodgers, the English poet, was 
all his life a successful banker; Charles Follen Adams, the humorous and dialectic 
poet, is a prosperous merchant in Boston ; and Edmund Clarence Stedman has 
been for many years the head of a firm of stock brokers with a suit of offices in 
Exchange Place, New York, dealing in government securities and railway stocks 
and bonds, and also petroleum, in which fortunes were at one time made and lost 
with great rapidity. Nevertheless, Mr. Stedman, the stock-broker and banker is 
still Mr. Stedman, the poet. The most of his splendid verses have been produced 
while he was depending for a living upon journalistic work or upon some business 
for support. Mr. Stedman also illustrates the fact, as Edgar Allen Poe had done 
before him, that a poet may be a practical critic. And why not? If poets are not 
the best critics of poetry, musicians are not the best critics of music, architects are 
not the best critics of architecture and painters of painting. Mr. Stedman’s “ A ic- 
torian Poets” is, perhaps, the most important contribution of all our American 
writers to the critical literature on the English Poets. 

The home-life of Mr. Stedman is described as being an ideally happy one. One 
of his poems entitled “ Laura, My Darling,” addressed to his wife, gives us a delight¬ 
ful glimpse into the heart and home of the poet. 


310 


EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 


BETROTHED ANEW. 

“The sunshine of the outer world beautifully illustrates the sunshine of the heart in the 5 Betrothed. 
Anew ’ of Edmund Clarence Stedman.”— Morris. 


HE sunlight fills the trembling air, 

And balmy days their guerdons bring; 
The Earth again is young and fair, 

And amorous with musky spring. 

The golden nurslings of the May 

In splendor strew the spangled green, 

And hues of tender beauty play, 

Entangled where the willows Jean. 

Mark how the rippled currents flow; 

What lustres on the meadows lie! 

And, hark ! the songsters come and go, 

And trill between the eajrth and sky. 

Who told us that the years had fled, 

Or borne afar our blissful youth ? 

Such joys are all about us spread, 

We know the whisper was not truth. 

The birds that break from grass and grove 

o o 

Sing every carol that they sung 


When first our veins were rich with love 
And May her mantle round us flung. 

0 fresh-lit dawn ! immortal life ! 

0 Earth’s betrothal, sweet and true, 
With whose delights our souls are rife! 
And aye their vernal vows renew! 

Then, darling, walk with me this morn; 

Let your brown tresses drink its sheen ; 
These violets, within them worn, 

Of floral fays shall make you queen. 

What though there comes a time of pain 
When autumn winds forebode decay ? 
The days of love are born again ; 

That fabled time is far away! 

And never seemed the land so fair 
As now, nor birds such notes to sing, 
Since first within your shining hair 
I wove the blossoms of the spring. 



THE DOOR-STEP. 


HE conference meeting through at last, 
We boys around the vestry waited, 
To see the girls come tripping past 
Like snow-birds willing to be mated. 

Not braver he that leaps the wall, 

By level musket-flashes litten, 

Than I, who stepped before them all 
Who longed to see me get the mitten. 

But no, she blushed and took my arm ! 

We let the old folks have the highway, 

And started toward the Maple Farm, 

Along a kind of lovers’ by-way. 

1 I can’t remember what we said, 

Twas nothing worth a song or story, 

Yet that rude path by which we sped 
Seemed all transformed and in a glory. 

The snow was crisp beneath our feet, 

The moon was full, the fields were gleaming; 

By hood and tippet sheltered sweet 

Her face with youth and health was beaming. 

The little hand outside her muff— 

0 sculptor, if you could but mould it! 


So slightly touched my jacket-cuff, 

To keep it warm I had to hold it. 

To have her with me there alone, 

’Twas love and fear and triumph blended: 

At last we reached the foot-worn stone 
Where that delicious journey ended. 

She shook her ringlets from her hood. 

And with a “ Thank you Ned,” dissembled, 

But yet I knew she understood 

With what a daring wish I trembled. 

A cloud passed kindly overhead, 

The moon was slyly peeping through it, 

Yet hid its face, as if it said, 

“ Come, now or never, do it, do it! u 

My lips till then had only known 
The kiss of mother and of sister, 

But somehow full upon her own 

Sweet, rosy, darling mouth—I kissed her! 

Perhaps ’twas boyish love, yet still, 

0 listless woman ! weary lover ! 

To feel once more that fresh wild thrill, 

I’d give—But who can live youth over! 




















































































































GEORGE BANCROFT. 


“ THE MOST FAMOUS AMERICAN HISTORIAN.” 



HE chief historians who have added lustre to American literature dur¬ 
ing the nineteenth century are Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Parkman, 
McMaster and John Fiske; and, when we add to these James Par- 
ton, the American biographer, we present an array of talent and 
scholarship on which any nation might look with patriotic pride. 
They have been excelled by the historians of no other nation of our 
time, if, indeed—taken from a national standpoint—they have not produced the best 
historical literature of the present century. 

Though Prescott is the oldest, George Bancroft, in the estimation of the great 
majority, stands first, perhaps, among all the American historians. This eminent 
writer was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, in October, 1800, the same month and 
year in which Macauley, the great English historian, first saw the light, and,—after 
living one of the most laborious public and literary lives in the history of the world, 
—died at the ripe old age of ninety-one years (1891). His father, the Reverend 
Aaron Bancroft, was a minister of the Congregational Church in Worcester for 
more than a half century and had the highest reputation as a theologian of learn¬ 
ing and piety. 

At the early age of thirteen, George Bancroft entered Harvard College from 
which he graduated at the age of seventeen with the highest honors of his class. 
His first inclinations were to study theology; but in 1818, he went to Germany 
where he spent two years in the study of liistory and philology, and it was there 
that he obtained his degree of Doctor of Philosophy. During the next two years, 
he visited in succession, Berlin, Heidelberg, Rome, Paris, and London, returning 
home in 1822, the most accomplished scholar for his age which our country, at that 
time, had produced. 

Soon after his return to the United States, Mr. Bancroft was appointed to the 
chair of Greek in Harvard College and those who had the benefit of his instruction 
spoke of his zeal, faithfulness and varied learning as a teacher. He afterward 
established, in conjunction with Joseph G. Cogswell, a school of high classical char¬ 
acter at Northhampton, Massachusetts. While engaged here, he prepared a number 
of Latin text books for schools, which were far in advance of anything then used in 
the country. In the meantime, he had given some attention to politics and had 
been engaged for several years, incidentally, upon his “ History of the United 
States.” 


311 




























312 


GEORGE BANCROFT. 


In 1828 Mr. Bancroft joined the Democratic Party, haying formerly been a * 
Whig, and began to take an active interest in politics, where his great historic 
learning and broad statesmanship placed him quickly on the high road to political 
preferment. He was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1830, but declined, 
as he was then so much engaged upon his ‘‘History of the United States” that he 
was unwilling to turn aside, at least until the first volume was issued, which 
appeared in 1834. The first and second and third volumes of this work, comprising 
the Colonial history of the country, were received with great satisfaction by the 
public on both sides of the Atlantic, being in brilliancy of style, picturesque 
sketches of character and incidents, compass of learning and generally fair reason¬ 
ing far in advance of anything that had been written on the subject. 

“Bancroft, the Historian,” was now the recognition he was accorded, and his 
fame began to spread. He was made Collector of the Port of Boston in 1838 by 
President Van Buren, which position he held until 1841. In 1844 he ran as 
Democratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, but was defeated. During 
1845 and 1846 he served his country as Secretary of the Navy under President 
Polk, and while in this office he planned and established the Naval Academy at 
Annapolis and issued the orders by which California was annexed to the United 
States. In 1846 President Polk further honored the historian by appointing him 
Minister-Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, where he represented the United States 
until 1849. The first three volumes of Mr. Bancroft’s histories had preceded him 
to England. “The London Monthly Beview” spoke in the highest terms of his 
quality as a historian, praising the sustained accuracy and dignity of his style, 
referring to him as a philosopher, a legislator, and a historian. He was also 
honored with the degree of D. C. L., by Oxford University in 1849, and was 
enrolled as a member of many learned societies. 

Thus laden with honors, he returned this same year to his country, made New 
York his place of residence, and resumed, with renewed energy, the prosecution of 
his historical labors. The fourth volume of his “History of the United States” 
appeared in 1852, and the next year the fifth volume was published, which was suc¬ 
ceeded by the sixth and seventh, the latter appearing in 1858, bringing the history 
of our country down into the stirring scenes of the Revolution. 

President Andrew Johnson made Mr. Bancroft United States Minister to Russia 
in 1867, and he was our national representative at the North German Confederation 
in 1868. General Grant appointed him as our Minister to the German Empire 
from 1871 to 1874, during which time he enjoyed the closest friendship of Prince 
Bismarck. Bismarck declares that Bancroft was the foremost representative of 
American grit that he had ever met. “Think,” said he to Minister Phelps many 
years afterwards, “of a Secretary of the Navy, a literary man by profession, taking 
it upon himself to issue orders for the occupation of a vast foreign territory as 
Bancroft did in the case of California. Again he caused the earliest seizure of 
Texas by the United States troops, while temporarily holding the portfolio of 
Minister of War. Only a really great man would undertake such responsibilities.” 

Bancroft’s “History of the United States” was completed in 1874; but the last 
and final revised edition of it was published in 1885, fifty-one years after the first 
volume had been issued. This great work comprises ten volumes and comes down 


GEORGE BANCROFT. 


313 - 


only to the close of the Revolution. It is a monumental work within itself—a fit 
monument to the greatest of American historians. The patriotism and eloquence 
of its author are manifest in nearly every page, and the work has been criticised as a 
Fourth-of-July oration in ten volumes. It is generally regarded as a standard 
history of America up to the time of the Constitution. 

Other works of Mr. Bancroft are “The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promises 
of the Human Race” (1854) ; “ Literary and Historical Miscellanies ” (1855), and 
“A Plea for the Constitution of the United States of America, Wounded in the 
House of its Guardians” (1886), written when the author was eighty-six years of age. 

Mr. Bancroft was an orator as well as a historian and politician, one of the best- 
known of his addresses being the famous oration on Lincoln, delivered before Con¬ 
gress in 1866. During the latter part of his life he had a winter home in Wash¬ 
ington, where the national archives and the Library of Congress were always at his 
hand, and a summer home at Newport, where he had a wonderful garden of roses, 
which was a great attraction. Rose-growing and horseback riding were his recrea¬ 
tions, and the erect and striking form of the historian, with his long gray beard, 
mounted on a fine horse, was for years a familiar figure at Newport and on the 
streets of Washington. 


It is beautiful to contemplate so long and useful a life as that of George Bancroft. 
When the old historian was nearly ninety years of age, he journeyed all the way 
from his northern home to Nashville, Tennessee, to make certain investigations, for 
historical data, among the private papers of President Polk. The writer of this 
sketch had the pleasure of witnessing the meeting between him and the venerable 
wife of James K. Polk at the old mansion which stands near the Capitol. It was 
a beautiful and impressive sight to see this grand old woman, who had been the 
first lady of the land forty-five years before, conducting this venerable historian, 
who had been her husband’s Secretary of War, about the premises. President 
Polk’s library with all the papers piled upon the table had remained just as he had 
left it, and into its sacred precincts Mr. Bancroft was admitted, with perfect liberty 
to select and take away whatever would be of service in his historical labors. 
What he did with these papers is unknown to the writer. Perhaps his death 
occurred too soon after to render them of practical service; but that the old historian 
died in the harness may well be supposed from the following extract taken from a 
letter written when he was more than eighty years of age: “I was trained to look 
upon life here as a season for labor. Being more than fourscore years old, I know 
the time for my release will soon come. Conscious of being near the shore of 
eternity, I wait without impatience and without dread the beckoning of the hand 
which will summon me to rest.” 

The beckoning hand appeared several years later—in 1891—and he passed 
quietly “over the river,” only nine years in advance of the death of the century 
with which he was born, having spent altogether one of the busiest, one of the most 
honorable, one of the most useful and the very longest life of all the celebrities in 
American literature. His fame is secure. His works will live after him a proud 
and lasting monument. 


•314 


GEORGE BANCROFT. 


CHARACTER OF ROGER WILLIAMS. 


HILE the State was thus connecting by the 
closest bonds the energy of its faith with 
its form of government, there appeared in 
its midst one of those elear minds which sometimes 
bless the world by their power of receiving moral 
truth in its purest light, and of reducing the just con¬ 
clusions of their principles to a happy and consistent 
practice. In February of the first year of the colony, 
but a few months after the arrival of Winthrop, and 
before either Cotton or Hooker had embarked for 
New England, there arrived at Nantasket, after a 
stormy passage of sixty-six days, “ a young minister, 
godly and zealous, having precious ” gifts. It was 
Roger Williams. He was then but a little more than 
thirty years of age ; but his mind had already ma¬ 
tured a doctrine which secures him an immortality of 
fame, as its application has given religious peace to 
the American world. He was a Puritan, and a fugi¬ 
tive from English persecution ; but his wrongs had 
not clouded his accurate understanding ; in the capa¬ 
cious recesses of his mind he had revolved the nature 
of intolerance, and he, and he alone, had arrived at 
the great principle which is its sole effectual remedy. 
He announced his discovery under the simple propo¬ 
sition of the sanctity of conscience. The civil magis¬ 
trate should restrain crime, but never control opinion ; 
should punish guilt, but never violate the freedom of 
the soul. The doctrine contained within itself an en¬ 
tire reformation of theological jurisprudence ; it would 



blot from the statute-book the felony of non-con¬ 
formity ; would quench the fires that persecution had 
so long kept burning; would repeal every law com¬ 
pelling attendance on public worship ; would abolish 
tithes and all forced contributions to the maintenance 
of religion; would give an equal protection to every 
form of religious faith ; and never suffer the authority 
of the civil government to be enlisted against the 
mosque of the Mussulman or the altar of the fire- 
worshipper, against the Jewish synagogue or the 
Roman cathedral. It is wonderful with what dis¬ 
tinctness Roger Williams deduced these inferences 
from his great principle ; the consistency with which, 
like Pascal and Edwards,—those bold and profound 
reasoners on other subjects,—he accepted every fair 
inference from his doctrines ; and the circumspection 
with which he repelled every unjust imputation. In 
the unwavering assertion of his views he never 
changed his position ; the sanctity of conscience was 
the great tenet which, with all its consequences, he 
defended, as he first trod the shores of New England ; 
and in his extreme old age it was the last pulsation 
of his heart. But it placed the young emigrant in 
direct opposition to the whole system on which Mas¬ 
sachusetts was founded; and, gentle and forgiving as 
was his temper, prompt as he was to concede every¬ 
thing which honesty permitted, he always asserted 
his belief with temperate firmness and unbending 
benevolence. 


-•O* 


DESTRUCTION OF THE TEA IN BOSTON HARBOR. 


On the 28th day of November, 1773, the ship Dartmouth appeared in Boston Harbor, with one hundred 
and fourteen chests of tea. The ship was owned by Mr. Rotch, a Quaker merchant. In a few days after, 
two more tea-ships arrived. They were all put under strict guard by the citizens, acting under the lead of 
a committee of correspondence, of which Samuel Adams was the controlling spirit. The people of the 
neighboring towns were organized in a similar manner, and sustained the spirit of Boston. The purpose 
of the citizens was to have the tea sent back without being landed ; but the collector and comptroller re¬ 
fused to give the ships a clearance unless the teas were landed, and Governor Hutchinson also refused his 
permit, without which they could not pass the “ Castle,” as the fort at the entrance of Boston Harbor was 
called. The ships were also liable to seizure if the teas were not landed on the twentieth day after their 
arrival, and the 16th day of December was the eighteenth day after. 


HP! morning of Thursday, the 16th of De¬ 
cember, 1773, dawned upon Boston,—a day 
by far the most momentous in its annals. 
Beware, little town ; count the cost, and know well if 
you dare defy the wrath of Great Britain, and if 
you love exile, and poverty, and death, rather than 



submission. At ten o’clock, the people of Boston, 
with at least two thousand men from the country, as¬ 
sembled in the Old South. A report was made that 
Rotch had been refused a clearance from the col¬ 
lector. “ Then,” said they to him, “ protest im¬ 
mediately against the custom-house, and apply to 














GEORGE BANCROFT. 


315 


the Governor for his pass, so that your vessel may 
this very day proceed on her voyage to London.” 

The Governor had stolen away to his country- 
house at Milton. Bidding Rotch make all haste, 
the meeting adjourned to three in the afternoon. 
At that hour Rotch had not returned. It was in¬ 
cidentally voted, as other towns had done, to ab¬ 
stain wholly from the use of tea; and every town 
was advised to appoint its committee of inspection, to 
prevent the detested tea from coming within any of 
them. Then, since the governor might refuse his 
pass, the momentous question recurred, whether it be 
the sense and determination of this body to abide by 
their former resolutions with respect to not suffering 
the tea to be landed. On this question, Samuel 
Adams and Young* addressed the meeting, which 
was become far the most numerous ever held in 
Boston, embracing seven thousand men. There was 
among them a patriot of fervent feeling ; passionately 
devoted to the liberty of his country; still young, his 
eye bright, his cheek glowing with hectic fever. He 
knew that his strength was ebbing. The work of 
vindicating American freedom must be done soon, or 
he will be no party to the great achievement. He 
rises, but it is to restrain ; and, being truly brave and 
truly resolved, he speaks the language of moderation : 
“ Shouts and hosannas will not terminate the trials of 
this day, nor popular resolves, harangues, and accla¬ 
mations vanquish our foes. We must be grossly 
ignorant of the value of the prize for which we con¬ 
tend, of the power combined against us, of the in¬ 
veterate malice and insatiable revenge which actuate 
our enemies, public and private, abroad and in our 
bosom, if we hope that we shall end this controversy 
without the sharpest conflicts. Let us consider the 


issue before we advance to those measures which 
must bring on the most trying and terrible struggle 
this country ever saw.” Thus spoke the younger 
Quincy. “ Now that the hand is to the plough,” said 
others, “there must be no looking back;” and the 
whole assembly of seven thousand voted unanimously 
that the tea should not be landed. 

It had been dark for more than an hour. The 
church in which they met was dimly lighted; when, 
at a quarter before six, Rotch appeared, and satisfied 
the people by relating that the governor had refused 
him a pass, because his ship was not properly cleared. 
As soon as he had finished his report, Samuel Adams 
rose and gave the word: “ This meeting can do 
nothing more to save the country.” On the instant, 
a shout was heard at the porch; the war-whoop re¬ 
sounded ; a body of men, forty or fifty in number, 
disguised as Indians, passed by the door, and, en¬ 
couraged by Samuel Adams, Hancock, and others, 
repaired to Griffin’s Wharf, posted guards to prevent 
the intrusion of spies, took possession of the three 
tea-ships, and in about three hours, three hundred 
and forty chests of tea—being the whole quantity 
that had been imported—were emptied into the bay, 
without the least injury to other property. “All 
things were conducted with great order, decency, and 
perfect submission to government.” The people 
around, as they looked on, were so still that the noise 
of breaking open the tea-chests was distinctly heard. 
A delay of a few hours would have placed the tea 
under the protection of the admiral at the Castle. 
After the work was done, the town became as still 
and calm as if it had been holy time. The men from 
the country that very night carried back the great 
news to their villages. 


CHIVALRY AND PURITANISM. 


ISTORIANS have loved to eulogize the 
manners and virtues, the glory and the 
benefits, of chivalry. Puritanism accom¬ 
plished for mankind far more. If it had the secta¬ 
rian crime of intolerance, chivalry had the vices of 
dissoluteness. The knights were brave from gal¬ 
lantry of spirit; the Puritans, from the fear of God. 



The knights were proud of loyalty; the Puritans, of 
liberty. The knights did homage to monarchs, in 
whose smile they beheld honor, whose rebuke was the 
wound of disgrace; the Puritans, disdaining cere¬ 
mony, would not bow at the name of Jesus, nor bend 
the knee to the King of kings. Chivalry delighted 
in outward show, favored pleasure, multiplied amuse- 


*Dr. Thomas Young, a physician, and afterwards an army-surgeon, was a zealous patriot, and a leading speaker and 
writer of the time. 











316 


GEORGE BANCROFT. 


ment, and degraded the human race by an exclusive 
respect for the privileged classes ; Puritanism bridled 
the passions, commanded the virtues of self-denial, 
and rescued the name of man from dishonor. The 
former valued courtesy; the latter, justice. The 
former adorned society by graceful refinements; the 


latter founded national grandeur on universal educa¬ 
tion. The institutions of chivalry were subverted by 
the gradually increasing weight, and knowledge, and 
opulence of the industrious classes ; the Puritans, 
rallying upon those classes, planted in their hearts the 
undying principles of democratic liberty. 


■•O 


THE POSITION OF THE PURITANS. 


0 the colonists the maintenance of their 
unity seemed essential to their cordial 
resistance to English attempts at oppression. 
And why, said they, should we not insist upon this 
union? We have come to the outside of the world 
for the privilege of living by ourselves: why should 
we open our asylum to those in whom we can repose 
no confidence? The world cannot call this persecu¬ 
tion. We have been banished to the wilderness : is 
it an injustice to exclude our oppressors, and those 
whom we dread as their allies, from the place which 
is to shelter us from their intolerance ? Is it a great 
cruelty to expel from our abode the enemies of our 



peace, or even the doubtful friend ? Will any man 
complain at being driven from among banished men, 
with whom he has no fellowship ? of being refused 
admittance to a gloomy place of exile ? The wide 
continent of America invited colonization; they 
claimed their own narrow domains for “ the 
brethren.” Their religion was their fife : they wel¬ 
comed none but its adherents ; they could not tolerate 
the scoffer, the infidel, or the dissenter; and the 
presence of the whole people was required in their 
congregation. Such was the system inflexibly estab¬ 
lished and regarded as ihe only adequate guarantee 
of the rising liberties of Massachusetts. 
















1 


JAMES PARTON. 

WRITER OF BIOGRAPHY. 


HERE can be no higher public service than that of the man who 
gives to his fellows, and particularly to the rising generation, good 
biographies of noble men. If this be true, then James Parton must 
be ranked among those who have done most for Americans, for the 
series of books which began many years ago with a life of Horace 
Greeley and which ended, only two months before the author’s death 
with the biography of Andrew Jackson, has made the heroes of American history 
real live men for thousands of readers, has stirred the patriotism and aroused the 
ambition of many a boyish student, and has won for himself the respect and esteem 
which belong to literary achievements. 

The ancestry of James Parton was French; his family having emigrated to 
England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. 

He was born in Canterbury, England, in 1822, and could just remember walking 
across the fields, in black clothes, at his father’s funeral. The solemn memory which 
thus took a strong hold upon his mind, was, perhaps, partly responsible for his 
dislike for ecclesiastical forms and particularly for the practice of formal “ mourn¬ 
ing.” His mother brought her little family to New York a year after her husband’s 
death, and James was educated in the schools of that city and at White Plains, 
New York. At the latter place he was in a boarding school where so much atten¬ 
tion was paid to religion that nearly every boy who passed through it was a member 
of the church. He seems to have found something repellent in the manner of pre¬ 
senting Christianity, and although he became a teacher in the school and later held 
for some years a similar position in Philadelphia, he sympathized less and less with 
it until he came avowedly to give up all belief in supernatural religion. He was a 
very successful teacher and took great delight in his work and would probably have 
devoted his life to the schoolroom, had he not found himself unable to continue the 
custom of opening the sessions of school with prayer and on this account been com¬ 
pelled to give up his position. Returning to New York he became associated with 
N. P. Willis in conducting the “Home Journal” and thus began his career as a 
literary man. While so employed he remarked one day to a New \ ork publisher, 
that a most interesting book could be made of the career of Horace Greeley, then at 
the summit of his power and fame as an editor. 

The suggestion resulted in his being commissioned to prepare such a biography, 
the publisher advancing the funds which enabled Mr. Parton to spend several 

317 






























318 


JAMES PARTON. 


months in collecting materials among the people in New Hampshire and Vermont, 
who had known Mr. Greeley in his early life. The book made a great sensation 
and at once gave its author high standing in the literary world. He began to con¬ 
tribute to a number of leading j>eriodicals on political and literary topics, and soon 
appeared as a public lecturer and found himself one of the most notable men of 
the day. 

Mr. Parton was married in 1856 to Mrs. Sara Payson Willis Eldredge, whose 
brother, the poet, N. P. Willis, was his former associate. Mrs. Willis was 
a popular contributor to “The New York Ledger” and other papers, under the 
pen-name of “Fanny Fern,” and Mr. Parton was soon engaged in similar work, 
and later became a member of the editorial staff of the “Ledger” and closely 
associated with Mr. Robert Bonner. This was of the greatest advantage to him, as 
it furnished a steady income, while allowing him leisure in which to devote himself 
to the more serious works which were his real contribution to literature and upon 
which his fame rests. His next book was “The Life and Times of Aaron Burr,” 
which was prepared from original sources, and which made Burr a somewhat less 
offensive character than he was at that time generally thought to be. He next pre¬ 
pared a “Life of Andrew Jackson,” which finally met with great success, but which, 
being published at the beginning of the War of the Rebellion and being subscribed 
for largely in the South, involved both author and publisher in considerable imme¬ 
diate loss. For twenty years he labored upon a “Life of Voltaire,” giving to the 
study of the great European Liberal of the last century all the time and energy he 
could spare from the contributions which he must regularly supply to the “Ledger” 
and “The Youth’s Companion.” The “Life of Voltaire” was his only biography 
of a European character, and while he thought it his best work, and while it is a 
wonderful picture, not only of the life and character of the great Frenchman, but 
of manners and morals in Europe in the eighteenth century, the public interest 
in its subject was not so great, and its success by no means so complete as that which 
greeted his American biographies. He was greatly interested in the robust char¬ 
acter of Gen. Benjamin Butler, and his next book was the story of the administra¬ 
tion of the city of New Orleans, by him. He then offered to the public the first 
comprehensive study of the “Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin” that had 
appeared. This is, by many, thought to be his best book. It was followed by a 
“Life of Jefferson,” and later by three books drawn from his contributions to 
periodicals, “Famous Americans of Recent Times,” “Noted Women of Europe and 
America,” and “Captains of Industry.” His last work was a volume upon 
“Andrew Jackson” for the “Great Commanders” series. 

After the death of “Fanny Fern” Mr. Parton took up his residence in New- 
buryport, Massachusetts, with Miss Eldredge, his wife’s daughter, who w T as charged 
with the care of an orphaned niece. This child had for several years been a 
member of his family, and had closely engaged his affection. The relations thus 
established resulted presently in the marriage of Mr. Parton to Miss Eldredge, a 
union, which, until his death in 1892, filled his life with joy and happiness. Mr. 
Parton took an active interest in the social life about him, joining frankly in every 
village enterprise and gradually acquiring very great influence in the community. 





JAMES BARTON. 


319 


OLD VIRGINIA. 


HEN John Rolfe, not yet husband of 
Pocahontas, planted the first tobacco seed 
in Jamestown, in 1G12, good tobacco sold 
in London docks at five shillings a pound, or two 
hundred and fifty pounds sterling for a hogshead of 
a thousand pounds’ weight. Fatal facility of money¬ 
making ! It was this that diverted all labor, capital 
and enterprise into one channel, and caused that 
first ship-load of Negroes in the James to be so wel¬ 
come. The planter could have but one object,—to 
get more slaves in order to raise more tobacco. Hence 
the price was ever on the decline, dropping first from 
shillings to pence, and then going down the scale of 
pence, until it remained for some years at an average 
of about two pence a pound in Virginia and three pence 
in London. In Virginia it often fell below two pence ; 
as, during brief periods of scarcity, it would rise to six 
and seven pence. 

Old Virginia is a pathetic chapter in political 
economy. Old Virginia, indeed! She reached 
decrepitude while contemporary communities were 
enjoying the first vigor of youth; while New York 
was executing the task which Virginia’s George 
Washington had suggested and foretold, that of con¬ 
necting the waters of the great West with the sea; 
while New England was careering gayly over the 
ocean, following the whale to his most distant retreat, 
and feeding belligerent nations with her superabun¬ 
dance. One little century of seeming prosperity; 
three generations of spendthrifts ; then the lawyer and 
sheriff! Nothing was invested, nothing saved for the 
future. There were no manufactures, no commerce, 
no towns, no internal trade, no great middle class. 
As fast as that virgin richness of soil could be con¬ 
verted into tobacco, and sold in the London docks, 
the proceeds were spent in vast, ugly mansions, 
heavy furniture, costly apparel, Madeira wine, fine 
horses, huge coaches, and more slaves. The planters 
lived as though virgin soil were revenue, not capital. 
They tried to maintain in Virginia the lordly style of 
English grandees, without any Birmingham, Staf- 
ordshire, Sheffield or London docks to pay for it. 
Their short-lived prosperity consisted of three ele¬ 
ments,—virgin soil, low-priced slaves, high-priced 


tobacco. The virgin soil was rapidly exhausted; 
the price of negroes was always on the increase; 
and the price of tobacco was always tending down¬ 
ward. Their sole chance of founding a staple com¬ 
monwealth was to invest the proceeds of their 
tobacco in something that would absorb their labor 
and yield them profit when the soil would no longer 
produce tobacco. 

But their laborers were ignorant slaves, the pos¬ 
session of whom destroyed their energy, swelled their 
pride, and dulled their understandings. Virginia’s 
case was hopeless from the day on which that Dutch 
ship landed the first twenty slaves; and, when the 
time of reckoning came, the people had nothing to 
show for their long occupation of one of the finest 
estates in the world, except great hordes of negroes, 
breeding with the rapidity of rabbits ; upon whose 
annual increase Virginia subsisted, until the most 
glorious and beneficial of all wars set the white race 
free and gave Virginia her second opportunity. 

All this was nobody’s fault. It was a combination 
of circumstances against which the unenlightened 
human nature o£ that period could not possibly have 
made head. 

Few men saw anything wrong in slavery. No man 
knew much about the laws that control the prosperity 
of States. No man understood the science of agri¬ 
culture. Every one with whom those proud and 
thoughtless planters dealt plundered them, and the 
mother country discouraged every attempt of the 
colonists to manufacture their own supplies. There 
were so many charges upon tobacco, in its course from 
the planters packing-house to the consumer’s pipe, 
that it was no very uncommon thing, in dull years, 
for the planter to receive from his agent in London, 
in return for his hogsheads of tobacco, not a pleasant 
sum of money, nor even a box of clothes, but a bill 
of charges which the price of the tobacco had not 
covered. One of the hardships of which the clergy- 
complained was, that they did not “ dare ” to send 
their tobacco to London, for fear of being brought 
into debt by it, but had to sell it on the spot to specu¬ 
lators much below the London price. The old Vir¬ 
ginia laws and records so abound in tobacco informa- 











320 


JAMES PAETON. 


tion that we can follow a hogshead of tobacco from 
its native plantation on the James to the shop of the 
tobacconist in London. 

In the absence of farm vehicles—many planters 
who kept a coach had no wagon—each hogshead was 
attached to a pair of shafts with a horse between 
them, and “rolled’' to a shed on the bank of the 
stream. When a ship arrived in the river from 
London, it anchored opposite each plantation which 
it served, and set ashore the portion of the cargo 
belonging to it, continuing its upward course until the 
hold was empty. Then, descending the river, it 
stopped at the different plantations, taking from each 
its hogsheads of tobacco, and the captain receiving 
long lists of articles to be bought in London with the 
proceeds of the tobacco. The rivers of Virginia, 
particularly the James and the Potomac, are wide 
and shallow, with a deep channel far from either 
shore, so that the transfer of the tobacco from the 
shore to the ship, in the general absence of landings, 
was troublesome and costly. To this day, as readers 
remember, the piers on the James present to the 
wondering passenger from the North a stretch of 
pine planks from an eighth to half a mile long. 
The ship is full at length, drops down past Newport 
News, salutes the fort upon Old Point Comfort, and 
glides out between the capes into the.ocean. 

vp* vL* vp vp vp Sp 

/T> 

How little the planters foresaw the desolation of 
their Province is affectingly attested by many of the 
relics of their brief affluence. They built their 
parish churches to last centuries, like the churches to 
which they were accustomed “ at home.” In neighbor¬ 


hoods where now a congregation of fifty persons could 
not be collected, there are ruins of churches that 
were evidently built for the accommodation of nu¬ 
merous and wealthy communities; a forest, in some 
instances, has grown up all around them, making it 
difficult to get near the imperishable walls. Some¬ 
times the wooden roof has fallen in, and one huge 
tree, rooted among the monumental slabs of the 
middle aisle, has filled all the interior. Other old 
churches long stood solitary in old fields, the roof 
sound, but the door standing open, in which the 
beasts found nightly shelter, and into which the pass¬ 
ing horseman rode and sat on his horse before the 
altar till the storm passed. Others have been used 
by farmers as wagon-houses, by fishermen to hang 
their seines in, by gatherers of turpentine as store¬ 
houses. One was a distillery, and another was a 
barn. A poor drunken wretch reeled for shelter into 
an abandoned church of Chesterfield County—the 
county of the first Jeffersons—and he died in a 
drunken sleep at the foot of the reading-desk, where 
he lay undiscovered until his face was devoured by 
rats. An ancient font was found doing duty as a 
tavern punch-bowl; and a tombstone, which served 
as the floor of an oven, used to print memorial words 
upon loaves of bread. Fragments of richly-colored 
altar-pieces, fine pulpit-cloths, and pieces of old car¬ 
ving used to be preserved in farm-houses and shown 
to visitors. When the late Bishop Meade began his 
rounds, forty years ago, elderly people would bring to 
him sets of communion-plate and single vessels which 
had once belonged to the parish church, long deserted, 
and beg him to take charge of them. 















FRANCIS PARKMAN. 

HISTORIAN OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN CONFLICT. 


0 FRANCIS PARKMAN, as much as to any one man, we owe the 
revival of interest in American history. His story of “The Pioneers 
of France in the New World,” “The Jesuits in North America,” 
“La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West,” The Old Regime 
in Canada,” “Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV.” “A 
Half-Century of Conflict,” “Montcalm and Wolf,” and “The Con- 
spiracy of Pontiac,” form a connected account of the rise and fall of the French 
power in America. They may well be described as one work, almost as one book. 
It was a great design formed when he was still a Harvard student, and held so 
tenaciously that no trials or disappointments could discourage him and no mountain 
of labor be too great for his untiring powers. 

He was born in Boston in 1823, and was so fortunate as to inherit wealth which 
not only set him free to devote himself to his vocation, but enabled him to command 
an amount and kind of assistance absolutely essential to his peculiar work, and in 
his peculiar circumstances, and which could be secured only by large expenditure. 
He had traveled a year abroad before he graduated in 1844 and had made himself 
master of the French language and familiar with French history and institutions. 
Bv repeated summer journeys into the wilderness of northern New England, he 
had acquainted himself with the conditions of pioneer life and, to some extent of 
Indian warfare. He pursued the study of law for two years, but it may well be sup¬ 
posed that these studies yielded larger results in a knowledge of the history of 
Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the facts in that his¬ 
tory bearing upon the great conflict in the new world, than in any definite grasp of 
the intricacies of the law itself. 

In the spring of 1846, he joined his cousin, Quincy A. Shaw, in the haz¬ 
ardous experiment of spending the summer with the Dacotah Indians, then 
living in an entirely savage condition east of the Rocky mountains. The 
two young men carried out their undertaking at the continuous risk of their 
lives, but it supplied Parkman with a minute knowledge of Indian thoughts 
and Indian ways which equipped him, as probably no other man was ever 
equipped, for writing the history in which Indians were among the chief actors. 
But the cost was very great. While among the Indians he was attacked by serious 
illness and it was one of the savage customs of his Indian companions that he who 
confessed sickness was to be immediately tomahawked. There was nothing for it, 
therefore, but to fight off his disease as best he could and make what show was pos- 
2i 321 






























322 


FRANCIS PARKMAN. 


sible, of health and vigor. He succeeded, but the strain was so great that it left 
him apparently disabled. His physicians assured him that he could not live, and 
for three years he was compelled to suspend all intellectual work and live a life as 
absolutely quiet as was possible. The remainder of his life was devoted to the books 
which we have named. For the greater portion of this fifty years he could not use 
his eyes for more than five continuous minutes, and he was compelled to exercise 
the greatest care not to bring on final collajDse by exceeding the few hours per day 
which he could safely devote to mental labor. Every one of his books was dictated 
to a relative, who cared for every detail of its preparation for the press. In gather¬ 
ing the materials for his histories he visited Europe seven times, and constantly 
employed a number of experts in copying important documents for his use. He 
very early became master of everything that had been printed which bore upon his 
subject, and realized that his main dependence must be upon manuscripts—private 
letters, public documents, official reports—scattered through public and private 
libraries in Europe and America, often unknown and frequently almost inac¬ 
cessible. An interesting example of his persistency is in his continuing to 
search for fifteen years for a volume of letters from Montcalm in Canada, which 
Montcalm had requested to have burned, but which Parkman believed to exist, and 
which was finally discovered in a private collection of manuscripts. 

The Massachusetts Historical Society possesses an oaken cabinet in which are 
stored some two hundred folio volumes of manuscript copies of important docu¬ 
ments, the gift of Mr. Parkman ; to Harvard College he gave a most interesting 
collection of fac-simile maps. 

Mr. Parkman was not a recluse, but on the contrary delighted in society, and 
indulged his liking as far as was possible with a due regard to saving his strength 
for his beloved work. He took the most lively interest in public affairs, and for a 
number of years was one of the corporation of Harvard University. 

An interesting side of Mr. Parkman’s life was his interest in horticulture. He 
became the owner in 1854 of a property on the shore of Jamaica Pond, and in this 
beautiful place devoted himself in the intervals of literary labor, and during the 
several periods of two or three years when he was absolutely compelled to abstain, 
to the culture of flowers. He made long continued and careful experiments in 
hybridizing lillies and other flowers and produced a number of new varieties one of 
which, a magnificent lilly was given his name by the English horticulturist who 
undertook to put the beautiful plant upon the market. He published “The Book 
of Boses,” held a professorship in the Bussey Institution, and was in 1886 president 
of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. But his principal workshop was a plain, 
comfortable room at the top of his sister’s house on Beacon Hill, in Boston, where 
with an open fire and convenient bookshelves and the willing help of friends and 
relatives he completed his task in 1892. It was at his suburban home which had 
supplied occupation and entertainment when driven from his work and whose 
beauties were so largely his own creation, that, two years later, he passed away. 

This, in brief, is the life of the man who has made, La Salle, and Montcalm live 
again for delighted thousands of nineteenth century readers. The study of our 
nation’s history is coming to take its proper position in our colleges and schools, our 
libraries are compelled to set apart more and more shelf-room for books which tell 


FRANCIS PARKMAN. 


323 


tli6 stoiy of the making of America and of our national life. There is no chapter 
in all this history more vivid, more lull of action, more crowded with the conflict 
between high and ignoble purpose, nor one which bears a more important relation 
to our national development than that which tells how the Frenchman came, how 
lie made friends with the Indian, how he contended for empire and was defeated. 
And no one.of these chapters has been written with more absolute fidelity to the 
actual facts in their proper relation. It is written in a style whose grace and ele¬ 
gance of diction, clearness and dignity of expression, completeness and accuracy of 
statement bring back the Indian and the Frenchman, the priest and the voyageur 
and make them live and move before our eyes. It was a field unoccupied, a period 
of history interesting, inviting, and complete in itself. Few historians have em¬ 
braced such an opportunity, of still fewer can it be said that their work is so well 
done that it need never be done a^ain. 

He was 
can we find 

thought conceived in youth and realized in later years. 


a neea never oe clone again. 

half a century at his work, untiringly; as has been well said, “Nowhere 
1 a better illustration of the French critic’s definition of a great life—a 

~J _i • __ >> 


o 


THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES. 


HE four northern colonies were known collec¬ 
tively as New England; Massachusetts 
may serve as a type of all. It was a mo¬ 
saic of little village republics, firmly cemented to¬ 
gether, and formed into a single body politic through 
representatives sent to the General Court,” at Bos¬ 
ton. Its government, originally theocratic, now tended 
towards democracy, ballasted as yet by strong tradi¬ 
tions of respect for established worth and ability, as 
well as by the influence of certain families prominent 
in affairs for generations. Yet there were no distinct 
class-lines, and popular power, like popular education, 
was widely diffused. 

Practically Massachusetts was almost independent 
of the Mother Country. Its people were purely Eng¬ 
lish. of good yoeman stock, with an abundant leaven 
drawn from the best of the Puritan gentry ; but their 
original character had been somewhat modified by 
changed conditions of life. A harsh and exacting 
creed, with its stiff formalism, and its prohibition of 
wholesome recreation ; excess in the pursuit of gain 
—the cply resource left to energies robbed of their 
natural play ; the struggle for existence on a hard and 
barren soil; and the isolation of a narrow village life 
—joined to produce in the meaner sorts qualities which 
were unpleasant, and sometimes repulsive. 



Puritanism was not an unmixed blessing. Its view 
of human nature was dark, and its attitude was one 
of repression. It strove to crush out not only what is 
evil, but much that is innocent and salutary. Human 
nature so treated will take its revenge, and for every 
vice that it loses find another instead. Nevertheless, 
while New England Puritanism bore its peculiar crop 
of faults, it also produced many sound and good fruits. 
An uncommon vigor, joined to the hardy virtues of a 
masculine race, marked the New England type. The 
sinews, it is true, were hardened at the expense of 
blood and flesh—and this literally as well as figura¬ 
tively ; but the staple of character was a sturdy con¬ 
scientiousness, an understanding courage, partiotism, 
public sagacity and a strong good sense. 

The New England Colonies abounded in high ex¬ 
amples of public and private virtue, though not always 
under prepossessing forms. There were few New 
Englanders, however personally modest, who could di¬ 
vest themselves of the notion that they belonged to a 
people in an especial manner the object of divine ap¬ 
proval ; and thus self-righteousness—along with cer¬ 
tain other traits—failed to commend the Puritan 
colonies to the favor of their fellows. Then, as now, 
New England was best known to her neighbors by her 
worst side. 










324 


FRANCIS PARKMAN. 


THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM * 



(FROM MONTCALM 

OR full two hours the procession of boats, 
borne on the current, steered silently down 
the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible? 
but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. 
The General was in one of the foremost boats, and 
near him was a young midshipman, John Robinson, 
afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the 
University of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his 
later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated 
Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Church-yard” to the 
officers about him. Probably it was to relieve the 
intense strain of his thoughts. Among the rest was 
the verse which his own fate was soon to illustrate.— 
“ The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” 

“ Gentlemen,” he said, as his recital ended, “ I 
would rather have written those lines than take 
Quebec.” None were there to tell him that the 
hero is greater than the poet. 

vp vp vj/ »p Vp 4p *p 

/p /p 


AND WOLFE, 1884.) 

on the right were in motion already, and doubtless 
by the Governor’s order. Vaudreuil came out of the 
house. Montcalm stopped for a few words with him ; 
then set spurs to his horse, and rode over the bridge 
of the St. Charles to the scene of danger. He rode 
with a fixed look, uttering not a word. 

******** 
Montcalm was amazed at what he saw. He had 
expected to see a detachment, and he found an army. 
Full in sight before him stretched the lines of Wolfe; 
the close ranks of English infantry, stretched a silent 
wall of red, and .the wild array of Highlanders, with 
i their waving tartans, and bagpipes screaming defiance, 
Vaudreuil had not come; but not the less was felt 
the evil of divided authority and the jealousy of the 
rival chiefs. Montcalm waited long for the forces 
he had ordered to join him from the left wing of the 
army. He waited in vain. It is said the Governor 
had detained them lest the English should attack the 


Montcalm had passed a troubled night. Through 
all the evening the cannon bellowed from the ships 
of Saunders, and the boats of the fleet hovered in 
the dusk off Beauport shore, threatening every 
moment to land. Troops lined the entrenchments 
till day, while the general walked the field that ad¬ 
joined his headquarters till one in the morning, 
accompanied by the Chevalier Johnstone and Colonel 
Poulariez. Johnstone says that he was in great agi¬ 
tation, and took no rest all night. At daybreak he 
heard the sound of cannon above the town. It was 
the battery at Samos firing on the English ships- 
He had sent an officer to the headquarters of Vau¬ 
dreuil, which was much nearer Quebec, with orders 
to bring him word at once should anything unusual 
happen. But no word came, and about six o’clock 
he mounted and rode thither wfith Johnstone. As 
they advanced, the country behind the town opened 
more and more upon their sight; till at length, when 
opposite Vaudreuil’s house, they saw across the St. 
Charles, some two miles away, the red ranks of British 
soldiers on the heights beyond. 

“ This is a serious business,” Montcalm said, and 
sent off Johnstone at full gallop to bring up the 
troops from the centre and left of the camp. Those 


Beauport shore. Even if they did so, and succeeded, 
the French might defy them, could they but put 
Wolfe to route on the Plains of Abraham. Neither 
did the garrison of Quebec come to the aid of Mont¬ 
calm. He sent to Ramesay, its commander, for 
twenty-five field-pieces which were on the palace bat¬ 
tery. Ramesay would give him only three, saying 
that he wanted them for his own defence. There 
were orders and counter-orders; misunderstandings, 

' o' 

haste, delay, perplexity. 

Montcalm and his chief officers held a council of 
war. It is said that he and they alike were for 
immediate attack. His enemies declared that he was 
afraid lest Vaudreuil should arrive and take com¬ 
mand ; but the Governor was not the man to assume 
responsibility at such a crisis. Others say his im¬ 
petuosity overcame his better judgment; and of this 
charge it is hard to acquit him. Bougainville was 
but a few miles distant and some of his troops were 
much nearer ; a messenger sent by way of Old Lorette 
could have reached him in an hour and a-half at 
most, and a combined attack in front and rear mi<rht 
have been concerted with him. If, moreover, Mont¬ 
calm could have come to an understanding with Vau- 
dreuil, his own forces might have been strengthened 


* By Permission of Little, Brown & Co 









FRANCIS PARKMAN. 


325 


by two or three thousand additional men from the 
town and the camp of Beauport; but he felt that 
there was no time to lose, for he imagined that Wolfe 
would soon be reinforced, which was no less an error. 
He has been blamed not only for fighting too soon, but 
for fighting at all. In this he could not choose. 
Fight he must, for Wolfe was now in a position to cut 
off all his supplies. His men were full of ardor, 
and he resolved to attack before their ardor cooled. 
He spoke a few words to them in his keen, vehement 
way. “ I remember very well how he looked,” one 
of the Canadians, then a boy of eighteen, used to say 
in his old age. “ He rode a black or dark bay horse 
along the front of our lines, brandishing his sword, as 
if to excite us to do our duty. He wore a coat with 
wide sleeves, which fell back as he raised his arm, and 
showed the white linen of the wristband.” 

The English waited the result with a composure 
which, if not quite real, was well feigned. The three 
field-pieces sent by Ramesay plied them with canister- 
shot, and fifteen hundred Canadians and Indians 
fusilladed them in front and flank. 

Wolfe was everywhere. How cool he was, and 
why his followers loved him is shown by the following 
incident that happened in the course of the morning. 
One of his captains was shot through the lungs; and 
on recovering consciousness he saw the general stand¬ 
ing by his side. Wolfe pressed his hand, told him not 
to despair, praised his services, promised him early 
promotion, and sent an aide-de-camp to Monckton to 
beg that officer to keep the promise if he himself 
should fall. 

It was toward ten o’clock when, from the high ground 
on the right of the line, Wolfe saw that the crisis was 
near. The French on the ridge had formed themselves 
into three bodies, regulars in the centre, regulars 
and Canadians on right and left. Two field-pieces, 
which had been dragged up the heights at Anse du 
Foulon, fired on them with grapeshot, and the troops, 
rising from the ground, prepared to receive them. In 
a few moments more they were in motion. They came 
on rapidly, uttering loud shouts, and firing as soon as 
they were within range. Their ranks, ill-ordered at 
best, were further confused by a number of Canadians 
who had been mixed among the regulars, and who, 
after hastily firing, threw themselves on the ground to 


reload. The British advanced a few rods ; then halted 
and stood still. When the French were within forty 
paces the word of command rang out, and a crash of 
musketry answered all along the line. The volley was 
delivered with remarkable precision. In the battalions 
of the centre, which had suffered least from the ene¬ 
my’s bullets, the simultaneous explosion was after¬ 
wards said by French officers to have sounded like a 
cannon-shot. 

Another volley followed, and then a furious clatter¬ 
ing fire that lasted but a minute or two. When the 
smoke rose, a miserable sight was revealed : the ground 
cumbered with dead and wounded; the advancing 
masses stopped short and turned into a frantic mob, 
shouting, cursing, gesticulating. The order was given 
to charge. Then over the field rose the British cheer, 
mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan. 
Some of the corps pushed forward with the bayonet; 
some advanced firing. The clansmen drew their 
broadswords and dashed on, keen and swift as blood¬ 
hounds. At the English right, though the attacking 
column was broken to pieces, a fire was still kept up, 
chiefly, it seems, by sharpshooters from the bushes and 
cornfields, where they had lain for an hour or more. 
Here Wolfe himself led the charge at the head of the 
Louisbourg Grenadiers. A shot shattered his wrist. 
He wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on. 
Another shot struck him and he still advanced, when 
a third lodged in his breast. He staggered, and sat 
on the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the Grenadiers, 
one Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and 
a private soldier, aided by an officer of artillery 
who ran to join them, carried him in their arms to the 
rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did 
so, and asked if he would have a surgeon. “ There’s 
no need,” he answered ; “ it’s all over with me.” A 
moment after, one of them cried out: “ They run, see 
how they run!” “Who run?” Wolfe demanded, 
like a man roused from sleep. “ The enemy, sir. 
Egad, they give way everywhere ! ” 

“ Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton,” returned the 
dying man, “tell him to march Webb’s Regiment down 
to Charles River to cut off their retreat from the 
bridge.” Then, turning on his side, he murmured: 
“ Now, God be praised, I will die in peace ! ” and in 
a few moments his gallant soul had fled. 





WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 

HISTORIAN OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO AND PERU. 

T MAY well be doubted whether any other historian was ever so 
loved both by those who knew him personally and by those who 
counted themselves fortunate in knowing him through his books as 
was William H. Prescott. Indeed that love promises to be peren¬ 
nial, for “The Conquest of Mexico ” and “The Conquest of Peru” 
continue to be the delight of the intelligent schoolboy and bid fair 
to maintain their hold upon public interest in succeeding generations. 

Prescott was a native of Salem, Massachusetts, having been born in that city on 
the 4th of May, 1796. His father was a lawyer, and he inherited from him literary 
tastes, love of learning and great mental vigor. He was accidentally struck, while 
a Junior at Harvard, by a piece of hard bread, thrown by a fellow student, and the 
blow deprived him forever of the use of his left eye, gave him many months of 
tedious suffering in darkened rooms, and resulted in such serious damage to the 
other eye as to make it of little and constantly decreasing use to him. He had in¬ 
tended to be a lawyer, but this accident made another choice necessary. He de¬ 
liberately resolved upon a literary career and prepared himself for it in the most 
thorough and painstaking way imaginable. A memorandum dated October, 1821, 
lays out a course of study which one might think unnecessary for a graduate of Har¬ 
vard College, but which he undertook for the purpose of perfecting his style, and 
with what degree of success the universal admiration of his works well testifies. 
It was as follows: 

“ 1. Principles of Grammar, correct writing, etc. 

2. Compendious history of North America. 

3. Fine prose-writers of English. 

4. Latin classics one hour a day.” 

This course, omitting the American history, he faithfully pursued for about a year, 
when he took up the study of French and, later, of German. His study of Spanish 
and consequently his choice of the topics of his great works came about almost 
accidentally. He had found the study of German very difficult, so much so that he 
was in despair. His friend George Ticknor had delivered to the Senior Class at 
Harvard a series of lectures on Spanish literature, and, to divert and entertain him 
during a period of discouragement and of suffering from his eyes, proposed to read 
the lectures to him. He was so delighted with the subject that he immediately 
began the study of the language with the result that the remainder of his life was 

326 




























WILLIAM HICK LING PRESCOTT. 


devoted to Spanish subjects. Prescott had married, in 1820, to Miss Susan Amory, 
the daughter of a cultivated and successful Boston merchant, and of the marriage 
he said, near the close of his life, “ contrary to the assertion of a French philosopher 
who says that the most fortunate husband finds reason to regret his condition at least 
once in twenty-four hours,—I may truly say that I have found no such day in the 
quarter of a century that Providence has spared us to each other.” Mrs. Prescott 
was devoted to her husband, and until his death in 1859, was his continual support, 
adviser and assistant. 

The account of his method of composition is told in one of his letters: “In the 
Christmas of 1837 my first work, ‘The History of Ferdinand and Isabella,’ was 
given to the world. X obtained the services of a reader who knew no language but 
his own, (English). I taught him to pronounce Castilian in a manner suited, I sus- 



mr. Prescott’s house at pepperett, mass. 


pect more to viy ear than to that of a Spaniard, and we began our weaiisome 
journey through Mariana’s noble (Spanish) history. I cannot even now call to 
mind without a smile the tedious hours in which, seated under some old trees in my 
country residence, we pursued our slow and melancholy way over pages which 
afforded no glimmering of light to him, and from which the light came dimly stiug- 
odino- to me through a half intelligible vocabulary. But in a few weeks the light 
became stronger, and I was cheered by the consciousness of my own improvement 
and when we had toiled our way through seven quartos, I found I could understand 
the book when read about two-thirds as fast as ordinary English My readers 
office required the more patience; he had not even this result to cheer him in ms 
labor. I now felt that the great difficulty could be overcome, and I obtainedthe 
services of a reader whose acquaintance with modern and ancient tongues supplied,. 












328 


WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 


as far as it could be supplied, the deficiency of eyesight on my part. But though 
in this way I could examine various authorities, it was not easy to arrange in my 
mind the results of my reading drawn from different and often contradictory accounts. 
To do this I dictated copious notes as I went along, and when I had read enough 
for a chapter (from thirty to forty, and sometimes fifty pages in length), I had a 
mass of memoranda in my own language, which would easily bring before me in 
one view, the fruit of my researches. These notes were carefully read to me, and 
while my recent studies were fresh in my recollection, I ran over the whole of any 
intended chapter in my mind. This process I repeated at least half a dozen times, 
so that when I finally put my pen to paper it ran off pretty glibly for it was an 
effort of memory rather than composition. 

Writing presented me a difficulty even greater than reading. Thierry, the famous 
blind historian of the Norman conquest, advised me to cultivate dictation; but I 
usually preferred a substitute that I found in a writing-case made for the blind 
which I procured in London, forty years since. It consists of a frame of the size 
of a sheet of paper, traversed by brass wires, as many as lines are wanted on the 
page, and with a sheet of carbonated paper, such as is used for getting duplicates, 
pasted on the reverse side. With an ivory or agate stylus the writer traces his char¬ 
acters between the wires on the carbonated sheet, making indelible marks, which he 
cannot see, on the white page below. This treadmill operation has its defects; and 
I have repeatedly supposed I had accomplished a good page, and was proceeding in 
all the glow of composition to go ahead, when I found I had forgotten to insert a 
sheet of writing-paper below, that my labor had all been thrown away, and that the 
leaf looked as blank as myself. Notwithstanding these and other whimsical dis¬ 
tresses of the kind, I have found my writing-case my best friend in my lonely 
hours, and with it have written nearly all that I have sent into the world the last 
forty years.” 

Prescott’s writings were successful from the first. Translations of the “History 
of Ferdinand and Isabella” appeared within a few years in French, German, 
Spanish, Italian and Russian, and it is surely no wonder that the author took up 
with a good heart the preparation of a “ History of the Conquest of Mexico,” and 
then a “History of the Conquest of Peru,” both of which were received with the 
same appreciation that had rewarded his first published work. 

He had spent some time abroad before his marriage, partly in the hope of bene- 
fitting his eyesight. In 1850 he again visited England and spent some time on the 
continent. He wrote a number of miscellaneous articles for magazines and reviews, 
and published in 1855, two, and in 1858 the third volume of his uncompleted 
“History of the Reign of Philip II., King of Spain.” This, had he lived to 
complete it, would doubtless have been his greatest work. It was received with 
such favor that six months after the publication of the first two volumes, eight 
thousand copies had been sold and the sales of his other works had been so stimu¬ 
lated as to bring the total up to thirty thousand volumes during that time, which 
yielded the author the substantial royalty of seventeen thousand dollars. 

A slight stroke of paralysis had already enfeebled him, and a second terminated 
his life on the 28th of January, 1859. His wife, one daughter, and two sons sur¬ 
vived him. 


WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 


329 


Few men have combined so many engaging qualities. His blindness had made 
no change in Ins appearance, and he was thought to be one of the handsomest men 
oi his tune. His cheerfulness of disposition was so great that at the time of his 
most intense suffering he addressed those who cared for him with such brightness 
and consideration that one might have thought their positions reversed. The per¬ 
sonal friends who were won by his grace of manner and by the sterling worth of 
liis charactei have nearly all passed away, but the hope that he early expressed, 

“to produce something which posterity would not willingly let die,” was most 
abundantly realized. 


-♦o« 


THE GOLDEN AGE OF TEZCUCO. 
(from history OF CONQUEST OF MEXICO, 1843.) 


IIE first measure of Nezahualcoyotl, on 
gSl returning to liis dominions, was a general 

-sSh! amnesty. It was liis maxim “ that a 

monarch might punish, but revenge was unworthy 
of him.” In the present instance he was averse 
even to punish, and not only freely pardoned his 
rebel nobles, but conferred on some, who had most 
deeply offended, posts of honor and confidence. 
Such conduct was doubtless politic, especially as 
their alienation was owing probably, much more to 
fear of the usurper than to any disaffection towards 
himself. But there are some acts of policy which a 
magnanimous spirit only can execute. 

The restored monarch next set about repairing the 
damages sustained under the late misrule, and reviv¬ 
ing, or rather remodelling, the various departments 
of government. He framed a concise, but compre¬ 
hensive, code of laws, so well suited, it was thought, 
to the exigencies of the times, that it was adopted 
as their own by the two other members of the triple 
alliance. It was written in blood, and entitled the 
author to be called the Draco rather than “ the Solon 
of Anahuac,” as he is fondly styled by his admirers. 
Humanity is one of the best fruits of refinement. 
It is only with increasing civilization that the legisla¬ 
tor studies to economize human suffering, even for 
the guilty; to devise penalties not so much by way 
of punishment for the past as of reformation for the 
future. 

He divided the burden of the government among 
a number of departments, as the council of war, the 
council of finance, the council of justice. This last 
was a court of supreme authority, both in civil and 


criminal matters, receiving appeals from the lower 
tribunals of the provinces, which were obliged to 
make a full report, every four months, or eighty days, 
of their own proceedings to this higher judicature. 
In all these bodies, a certain number of citizens were 
allowed to have seats with the nobles and professional 
dignitaries. There was, however, another body, a 
council of state, for aiding the king in the dispatch 
of business, and advising him in matters of importance, 
which was drawn altogether from the highest order 
of chiefs. It consisted of fourteen members; and 
they had seats provided for them at the royal table. 
Lastly, there was an extraordinary tribunal, called 
the council of music, but which differing from the 
import of its name, was devoted to the encourage¬ 
ment of science and art. Works on astronomy, 
chronology, history or any other science, were required 
to be submitted to its judgment, before they could 
be made public. This censorial power was of some 
moment, at least with regard to the historical depart¬ 
ment, where the wilful perversion of truth was made 
a capital offence by the bloody code of Nezahual¬ 
coyotl. Yet a Tezcucan author must have been a 
bungler, who could not elude a conviction under the 
cloudy veil of hieroglyphics. This body, which was 
drawn from the best instructed persons in the king¬ 
dom, with little regard to rank, had supervision of all 
the productions of art, and the nicer fabrics. It 
decided on the qualifications of the professors in the 
various branches of science, on the fidelity of their 
instructions to their pupils, the deficiency of which 
was severely punished, and it instituted examinations 
of these latter. In short, it was a general board of 











330 


WILLIAM IIICKLING PRESCOTT. 


education for the country. On stated days, histori¬ 
cal compositions, and poems treating of moral or 
traditional topics, were recited before it by their 
authors. Seats were provided for the three crowned 
heads of the empire, who deliberated with the other 
members on the respective merits of the pieces, and 
distributed prizes of value to the successful com- 
petitors. 

The influence of this academy must have been 
most propitious to the capital, which became the 
nursery not only of such sciences as could be com¬ 
passed by the scholarship of the period, but of various 
useful and ornamental arts. Its historians, orators, 
and poets were celebrated throughout the country. 
Its archives, for which accommodations were provided 
in the royal palaces, were stored with the records of 
primitive ages. Its idiom, more polished than the 
Mexican, was, indeed, the purest of all the Nahuatlac 
dialects, and continued, long after the Conquest, to 
be that in which the best productions of the native 
races were composed. Tezcuco claimed the glory of 
being the Athens of the Western world. 

Among the most illustrious of her bards was the em- 
peror himself,—for the Tezcucan writers claim this 
title for their chief, as head of the imperial alliance. 
He doubtless appeared as a competitor before that 
very academy where he so often sat as a critic. 
Many of his odes descended to a late generation, and 
are still preserved, perhaps, in some of the dusty re¬ 
positories of Mexico or Spain. The historian 
Ixtlilxochitl has left a translation, in Castilian, of one 
of the poems of his royal ancestor. It is not easy 
to render his version into corresponding English 
rhyme, without the perfume of the original escaping 
in this double filtration. They remind one of the 
rich breathings of Spanish-Arab poetry, in which an 
ardent imagination is tempered by a not unpleasing 
and moral melancholy. But, though sufficiently 
florid in diction, they are generally free from the 
meretricious ornaments and hyperbole with which the 
minstrelsy of the East is usually tainted. They turn 


on the vanities and mutability of human life,—a 
topic very natural for a monarch who had himself 
experienced the strangest mutations of fortune. 
There is mingled in the lament of the Tezcucan bard, 
however, an Epicurean philosophy, which seeks relief 
from the fears of the future in the joys of the pre¬ 
sent. “ Banish care,” he says: “ if there are bounds 
to pleasure, the saddest of life must also have an end. 
Then weave the chaplet of flowers, and sing thy songs 
in praise of the all-powerful God; for the glory of 
this world soon fadetli away. Bejoice in the green 
freshness of thy spring ; for the day will come when 
thou shalt sigh for these joys in vain ; when the 
sceptre shall pass from thy hands, thy servants shall 
wander desolate in thy courts, thy sons, and the sons 
of thy nobles, shall drink the dregs of distress, and 
all the pomp of thy victories and triumphs shall live 
only in their recollection. Yet the remembrance of 
the just shall not pass away from the nations, and 
the good thou hast done shall ever be held in honor. 
The goods of this life, its glories and its riches, are 
but lent to us, its substance is but an illusory shadow, 
and the things of to-day shall change on the coming 
of the morrow. Then gather the fairest flowers 
from thy gardens, to bind round thy brow, and seize 
the joys of the present ere they perish.” 

But the hours of the Tezcucan monarch were not 
all passed in idle dalliance with the Muse, nor in the 
sober contemplations of philosophy, as at a later 
period. In the freshness of youth and early man¬ 
hood he led the allied armies in their annual expedi¬ 
tions, which were certain to result in a wider extent 
of territory to the empire. In the intervals of peace 
he fostered those productive arts which are the surest 
sources of public prosperity. He encouraged agri¬ 
culture above all; and there was scarcely a spot so 
rude, or a steep so inaccessible, as not to confess the 
power of cultivation. The land was covered with a 
busy population, and towns and citiea sprang up in 
places since deserted or dwindled into miserable vil¬ 
lages. 




THE BANQUET OF THE DEAD. 

(from “history of THE CONQUEST OF PERU,” 1847.) 



HE wealth displayed by the Peruvian princes 
was only that which each had amassed 
individually for himself. He owed nothing 


to inheritance from his predecessors. On the decease 
of an Inca, his palaces were abandoned; all his 
treasures, except what were employed in his obse- 








WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 


331 


quies, liis furniture and apparel, were suffered to re¬ 
main as lie had left them, and his mansions, save one, 
were closed up forever. The new sovereign was to 
provide himself with everything new for his royal 
state. The reason of this was the popular belief 
that the soul of the departed monarch would return 
after a time to reanimate his body on earth ; and 
they wished that he should find everything to which 
he had been used in life prepared for his recep¬ 
tion. 

When an Inca died, or, to use his own language? 
“ was called home to the mansions of his father, the 
Sun,” his obsequies were celebrated with great pomp 
and solemnity. The bowels were taken from the 
body and deposited in the temple of Tampu, about 
five leagues from the capital. A quantity of his 
plate and jewels was buried with them, and a number 
of his attendants and favorite concubines, amounting 
sometimes, it is said, to a thousand, were immolated 
on his tomb. Some of them showed the natural re¬ 
pugnance to the sacrifice occasionally manifested by 
the victims of a similar superstition in India. But 
these were probably the menials and more humble 
attendants; since the women have been known, in 
more than one instance, to lay violent hands on them¬ 
selves, when restrained from testifying their fidelity 
by this act of conjugal martyrdom. This melancholy 
ceremony was followed by a general mourning through¬ 
out the empire. At stated intervals, for a year, the 
people assembled to renew the expressions of their 
sorrow ; processions were made, displaying the banner 
of the departed monarch ; bards and minstrels were 
appointed to chronicle his achievements, and their 
sonsrs continued to be rehearsed at high festivals in 

O m 

the presence of the reigning monarch, thus stimu¬ 
lating the living by the glorious example of the dead. 

The body of the deceased Inca was skilfully em¬ 
balmed, and removed to the great temple of the Sun 
at Cuzco. There the Peruvian sovereign, on enter¬ 
ing the awful sanctuary, might behold the effigies of 


his royal ancestors, ranged in opposite files, the men 
on the right, and their queens on the left of the 
great luminary which blazed in refulgent gold on the 
walls of the temple. The bodies, clothed in the 
princely attire which they had been accustomed to 
wear, were placed on chairs of gold, and sat with 
their heads inclined downward, their hands placidly 
crossed over their bosoms, their countenances ex¬ 
hibiting their natural dusky hue—less liable to change 
than the fresher coloring of an European complexion— 
and their hair of raven black, or silvered over with 
age, according to the period at which they died ! It 
seemed like a company of solemn worshippers fixed 
in devotion, so true were the forms and lineaments 
to life. The Peruvians were as successful as the 
Egyptians in the miserable attempt to perpetuate the 
existence of the body beyond the limits assigned by 
nature. 

They cherished a still stranger illusion in the at¬ 
tentions which they continued to pay to those in¬ 
sensible remains, as if they were instinct with life. 
One of the houses belonging to the deceased Inca 
was kept open and occupied by his guard and atten¬ 
dants with all the state appropriate to royalty. On 
certain festivals the revered bodies of the sovereigns 
were brought out with great ceremony into the public 
square of the capital. Invitations were sent by the 
captains of the guard of the respective Incas to the 
different nobles and officers of the court; and enter¬ 
tainments were provided in the names of their masters, 

I which displayed all the profuse magnificence of their 
treasures, and “ such a display, says an ancient 
chronicler, u was there in the great square of Cuzco, 
on this occasion, of gold and silverplate and jewels, 
as no other city in the world ever witnessed.” The 
banquet was served by the menials of the respective 
households, and the guests partook of the melancholy 
cheer in the presence of the royal phantom with the 
same attention to the forms of courtly etiquette as 
if the living monarch had presided ! 
















JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 


HISTORIAN AND DIPLOMATIST. 

OTLEY’S history of the “Rise of the Dutch Republic” is, in some 
important respects, America’s greatest contribution to historical litera¬ 
ture. Its author was the son of a New England merchant of literary 
tastes, and inherited through both parents some of the best blood of 
New England. He was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, now 
a part of Boston, April 15, 1814. He was a delicate boy, but 
vigorous, vivacious, fond of outdoor sports and intellectual contests. He was a 
boyish friend of Wendell Phillips, and was early associated with many of that group 
of New England scholars who have done so much for American literature during 
the past half-century. Motley was educated at good schools near Boston, and 
entered Harvard at what would now seem the ridiculously early age of thirteen. 
He cared too much for general and voluminous reading to do thorough work in the 
prescribed college course, but his wit, his brilliant mind and his impulsive generosity 
made him a general favorite. After graduating from Harvard he studied in Ger¬ 
many, becoming acquainted at Gottingen with Bismarck, between whom and him¬ 
self there sprang up an intimate friendship which was renewed at every opportunity 
throughout his life. Bismarck said of him that “The most striking feature of his 
handsome and delicate appearance was uncommonly large and beautiful eyes. He 
never entered a drawing-room without exciting the curiosity and sympathy of the 
ladies.” He was married in 1837 to Mary, sister of Park Benjamin, a most attrac¬ 
tive and beautiful woman, and two years later he published an historical novel 
called “Morton’s Hope.” Neither this book nor another called “Merry Mount” 
proved a success, and both Motley and his friends were convinced that his real field 
of work was that of the historian. His first attempt in this direction was an essay 
published in the “North American Review” on the “Polity of the Puritans,” which 
not only demonstrated his skill and ability but gave expression to his intense love 
of liberty and to his lofty patriotism. 

An interesting episode in Motley’s life was his election in 1849 to the Massachu¬ 
setts House of Representatives. He does not seem to have been well adapted for a 
legislator and never sought a re-electiou. The incident which he most vividly 
remembered in this connection was his careful preparation of a report from the Com¬ 
mittee on Education, of which he was chairman, proposing measures which he had 
convinced himself were for the best, and the apparent ease with which a country 
member, Geo. S. Boutwell, who afterwards distinguished himself in the field of 






































JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 


333 


national politics, demolished his arguments, and convinced everybody, including the 
author of the report of the opposite view. 

Mr. Motley began the collection of materials for his “ History of Holland ” about 
1846. He devoted ten years to its preparation, making careful researches at Berlin, 
Dresden, the Hague and Brussels. When finally he had brought it to a conclusion 
he did not find it easy to make satisfactory arrangements for its publication. The 
leading house in London declined it, and it was finally published at the expense of 
the author. It was another and most marked example of the occasional lack of 
insight on the part of the wisest and best trained publishers, for the book which had 
gone begging to be printed was received everywhere with acclamations. Guizot, 
perhaps the foremost historian of modern times, personally supervised the translation 
into French, and wrote the introduction. The book had a large sale on both sides 
of the Atlantic, and Mr. Motley was at once recognized as a great historian. Mr. 
Froude has very justly said that this history is as “ complete as industry and genius 
can make it,” and “ one which will take its place among the finest stories in this or 
any other language.” Motley lived for the next two years in Boston, taking much 
interest in the “ Atlantic Monthly,” though he was too much engaged with historical 
study to contribute very frequently to its columns. In 1858 he returned to England, 
where he lived for most of his remaining life, visiting America only three times, 
and making on each occasion a comparatively short stay. He found residence 
abroad more convenient for historical research. His position in English society was 
an enviable one, and his daughters were all married to Englishmen, one of them to 
Sir William Vernon Harcourt. This residence in England, however, did not wean 
his heart from America or its institutions or make him any less an ardent patriot, and 
perhaps he never rendered his country a more signal service than when, on finding 
that the higher classes in England sympathized with the South, he addressed two 
letters to the London “ Times,” which did much to bring about a change of sentiment, 
and which remained as monuments to his loyalty and to his ability as an advocate. 

Mr. Motley had been appointed Secretary of the American Legation at St. Peters¬ 
burg in 1841, but had found the climate too rigorous and had continued at his post 
oidy a few months before tendering his resignation. He was now to undertake a 
more serious task in diplomacy. President Lincoln appointed him, in 1861, Minister 
to Austria. He was so absorbed in the great struggle going on in his own country 
that he gave up for the time the historical studies which made so large a part of his 
ordinary life, and “ lived only in the varying fortunes of the day, his profound faith 
and enthusiasm sustaining him and lifting him above the natural influence of a by 
no means sanguine temperament.” He continued Minister to Austria, performing 
the difficult service of that office with discretion and with credit until 1867, when, in 
consequence of a letter received by President Johnson from some obscure source, 
inquiries were made which Mr. Motley considered insulting, and he at once ten¬ 
dered his resignation. 

He had published in 1860 two volumes of his “ History of the United Nether¬ 
lands,” and they had been received with all the favor that, had greeted his former 
great work. The American war had delayed the completion ot the book, but in 
1868 he published the other two volumes. An article from the “Edinburgh 
Review ” discussing the first two volumes says: “ Mr. Motley combines as an his- 


334 


JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 


torian two qualifications seldom found united—to a great capacity for historical 
research he adds much power of pictorial representation.” 

This is the secret of his great success. Men who excel in the use of language are 
too often unwilling to undertake the drudgery which research entails, while those 
who are able and willing to read voluminous correspondence and con over number¬ 
less dispatches in order to establish some historical fact, are frequently unable to 
clothe the fact in words which will so illumine and illustrate the truth as to make it 
really live in the mind of the reader. That Motley possessed both of these abilities 
along with those others which made him to a very wide circle in both Europe and 
America a much loved man, is sufficient reason for the jDlace that lias been given 
him in the history of men of letters. 

Probably, at the request of Senator, Sumner Mr. Motley was in 1869 appointed 
Minister to England. The position was in many respects most agreeable to him. 
It gave him a post of great influence in a society in which he was known and 
admired, and opened possibilities of high service to the country which he loved 
with an ardor that amounted to enthusiasm. The Alabama claims were being urged 
upon the British Government, and the difficulties and responsibilities were very great. 
He was suddenly recalled in 1870 under circumstances that wounded him so deeply 
that it may be said he never recovered from the cruel surprise. The most probable 
explanation of President Grant’s course seems to be that it was the outcome of his 
difficulty with Mr. Sunnier over his San Domingo policy, and that Mr. Motley’s 
tastes and the pursuits to which he had devoted his life made him a man with whom 
the President could not in any large measure sympathize. When, therefore, the Presi¬ 
dent found his favorite measure defeated largely by the influence of Mr. Sumner, he 
ceased to have cause to retain Mr. Sumner’s friend in §o responsible a post. The 
wdiole matter looks, at this distance, discreditable, but it was probably the system of 
political favoritism then in vogue rather than either the President or liis Secretary of 
State that was to blame. 

Mr. Motley had intended to devote his last years to a “ History of the Thirty 
Years’ War,” but before undertaking it he wrote “ The Life and Death of John 
of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, with a View of the Primary Causes and Move¬ 
ments of the Thirty Years’ War,” which has been recognized as the most classical 
of his productions. It was his last work. Even before the death of Mrs. Motley in 
1874, lie was in somewhat feeble health, and while he did not abandon literary 
labor, he gave up at this time any hope of being able to engage in protracted effort. 
He spent a part of the year 1875 in Boston, returning to his daughter’s residence 
in Devonshire, where he died in 1877. Dean Stanley spoke of him as “one of the 
brightest lights of the Western Hemisphere, the high-spirited patriot, the faithful 
friend of England’s best and purest spirits ; the brilliant, the indefatigable his¬ 
torian.” A distinguished countryman of his own had once introduced him to an 
audience as one “ whose name belongs to no single country and to no single age: as 
a statesman and diplomatist and patriot, be belongs to America; as a scholar, to the 
world of letters; as a historian, all ages will claim him in the future.” 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 


oor; 

ooo 


BISMARCK* 

GLIMPSES OF NOTED PEOPLE FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY D.C.L 

EDITED BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 1889. * 


HEN I called, Bismarck was at dinner, so I 
left my card and said I would come back 
in half an hour. As soon as my card 
had been carried to him (as I learned afterwards) 
he sent a servant after me to the hotel, but I had 
gone another way. When I came back I was re¬ 
ceived with open arms. I can’t express to you 
how cordially he received me. If I had been his 
brother, instead of an old friend, he could not have 
shown more warmth and affectionate delight in 
seeing me. I find I like him even better than I 
thought I did, and you know how high an opinion 
I always expressed of his talents and disposition. 

He is a man of very noble character and of verv 

* */ 

powerful mind. The prominent place which he 
now occupies as a statesman sought him. He did 
not seek it, or any other office. The stand which 
he took in the Assembly from conviction, on the 
occasion of the outbreak of 1848, marked him at 
once to all parties as one of the leading characters 
of Prussia. Of course, I don’t now go into the 
rights and wrongs of the matter, but I listened with 
great interest, as you may suppose, to his detailed 
history of the revolutionary events of that year, and 
his share in them, which he narrated to me in a 
long conversation which we had last night. He 
wanted me to stay entirely in his house, but as he 
has his wife’s father and mother with him, and as 
I saw that it was necessary to put up a bed in a 
room where there was none, I decidedly begged off. 
I breakfasted there this morning, and am to dine 
there, with a party, to-day. To-morrow, I suppose, I 
shall dine there en famille. I am only afraid that 
the landlord here will turn me into the streets for 
being such a poor consommateur for him, and all I 
can do is to order vast quantities of seltzer water. 

The principal change in Bismarck is that he has 
grown stouter, but, being over six feet, this is an 
improvement. His voice and manner are singularly 
unchanged. His wife I like very much indeed; 
very friendly, intelligent and perfectly unaffected, and 
treats me like an old friend. In short, I can’t better 
describe the couple than by saying that they are 


as unlike M. and Mine, de - as it is possible 

to be. 

In the summer of 1851 he told me that the 
Minister, Manteuflel, asked him one day abruptly if 
he would accept the post of Ambassador at Frank¬ 
fort, to which (although the proposition was as unex¬ 
pected a one to him as if I should hear by the next 
mail that I had been chosen Governor of Massa¬ 
chusetts) he answered, after a moment’s deliberation, 
yes, without another word. The King, the same day> 
sent for him, and asked him if he would accept the 
place, to which he made the same brief answer, “Ja.” 
His Majesty expressed a little surprise that he made 
no queries or conditions, when Bismarck replied that 
anything the King felt strong enough to propose to 
him he felt strong enough to accept. I only write 
these details that you may have an idea of the man. 
Strict integrity and courage of character, a high 
sense of honor, a firm religious belief, united with 
remarkable talents, make up necessarily a combination 
which cannot be found any day in any court, and I 
have no doubt that he is destined to be Prime 
Minister, unless his obstinate truthfulness, which is 
apt to be a stumbling-block for politicians, stands in 
his way. . . . 

Well, he accepted the post, and wrote to his wife 
next day, who was preparing for a summer’s residence 
in a small house on the sea-coast, that he could not 
come because he was already Minister in Frankfort. 
The result, as he said, was three days of tears on her 
part. He had previously been leading the life of a 
plain country ’squire, with a moderate income, had 
never held any position in the government or in 
diplomacy, and had hardly ever been to court. He 
went into the office with a holy horror of the mys¬ 
terious nothings of diplomacy, but soon found how 
little there was in the whole “ galimatias.” Of 
course, my politics are very different from his, 
although not so antipodal as you might suppose, but 
I can talk with him as frankly as I could with you, 
and I am glad of an opportunity of hearing the other 
side put by a man whose talents and character I 
esteem, and who so well knows le dessous des cartes . 



* Copyright, Harper & Bros. 







336 


JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 


THE SIEGE OF LEYDEN.* 


EANTIME, the besieged city was at its last the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at 
gasp. The burghers had been in a state noonday through the city, and the doomed in- 
of uncertainty for many days ; being aware : habitants, fell like grass beneath its scythe. From 
that the fleet had set forth for their relief, but know- six thousand to eight thousand human beings sank 



ing full well the thousand obstacles which it had to 
surmount. They had guessed its progress by the 
illumination from the blazing villages ; they had heard 
its salvos of artillery on its arrival at North Aa; but 
since then all had been dark and mournful again, 
hope and fear, in sickening alternation, distracting 
every breast. They knew that the wind was un¬ 
favorable, and at the dawn of each day every eye 
was turned wistfully to the vanes of the steeples. So 
long as the easterly breeze prevailed, they felt, as 
they anxiously stood on towers and housetops, that 
they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, 
while thus patiently waiting, they were literally star¬ 
ving ; for even the misery endured at Harlem had not 
reached that depth and intensity of agony to which 
Leyden was now reduced. Bread, malt-cake, horse¬ 
flesh, had entirely disappeared ; dogs, cats, rats and 
other vermin were esteemed luxuries. A small 
number of cows, kept as long as possible for their 
milk, still remained ; but a few were killed from day 
to day, and distributed in minute proportions, hardly 
sufficient to support life among the famishing popula¬ 
tion. Starving wretches swarmed daily around the 
shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, con¬ 
tending for any morsel which might fall, and lapping 
eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement; 
while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily 
devoured. Women and children, all day long, were 
seen searching gutters and dunghills for morsels of 
food, which they disputed fiercely with the famish¬ 
ing dogs. The green leaves were stripped from 
the trees, every living herb was converted into 
human food ; but these expedients could not avert 
starvation. The daily mortality was frightful ; in¬ 
fants starved to death on the maternal breasts 

which famine had parched and withered ; mothers surrender so long as I remain alive, 
dropped dead in the streets, with their dead children j On the 28th of September a dove flew into the 
in their arms. In many a house the watchmen, in j city, bringing a letter from Admiral Boisot. In this 


before this scourge alone ; yet the people resolutely 
held out,—women and men mutually encouraging 
each other to resist the entrance of their foreign 
foe,—an evil more horrible than pest or famine. 

Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few mur¬ 
murs were, however, occasionally heard at the stead¬ 
fastness of the magistrates, and a dead body was 
placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent 
witness against his inflexibility. A party of the more 
faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van 
der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed 
through the streets. A crowd had gathered around 
him as he reached a triangular place in the centre of 
the town, into which many of the principal streets 
emptied themselves, and upon one side of which stood 
the church of Saint Pancras. There stood the burgo¬ 
master, a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark 
visage and a tranquil but commanding eye. He 
waved his broad-leaved felt hat for silence, and then 
exclaimed, in language which has been almost literally 
preserved, “ What would ye, my friends ? Why do 
ye murmur that we do not break our vows and sur- 
tender the city to the Spaniards ?—a fate more horrible 
than the agony which she now endures. I tell you I 
have made an oath to hold the city ; and may God 
give me strength to keep my oath ! I can die but 
once, whether by your hands, the enemy’s, or by the 
hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me ; not 
so that of the city intrusted to my care. I know 
that we shall starve if not soon relieved ; but starva¬ 
tion is preferable to the dishonored death which is 
the only alternative. Your menaces move me not; 
my life is at your disposal ; here is my sword, plunge 
it into my breast, and divide my flesh among you. 
Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no 


their rounds, found a whole family of corpses— 
father, mother, children, side by side ; for a disorder 
called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship 
and famine,, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge 


dispatch the position of the fleet at North Aa was 
described in encouraging terms, and the inhabitants 
were assured that, in a very few days at furthest, the 
long-expected relief would enter their gates. The 


* Copyright, J. Lewis Stackpole. 
















JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 


337 


tempest came to their relief. A violent equinoctial 
gale on the night of the 1st and 2d of October came 
storming from the northwest, shifting after a few 
hours full eight points, and then blowing still more 
violently from the southwest. The waters of the 
North Sea were piled in vast masses upon the 
southern coast of Holland, and then dashed furiously 
landward, the ocean rising over the earth and sweep¬ 
ing with unrestrained power across the ruined dykes. 
In the course of twenty-four hours the fleet at North 


Aa, instead of nine inches, had more than two feet of 
water. . . . On it went, sweeping over the 
broad waters which lay between Zoeterwoude and 
Zwieten ; as they approached some shallows which 
led into the great mere, the Zealanders dashed into 
the sea, and with sheer strength shouldered every 
vessel through. ... On again the fleet of 
Boisot still went, and, overcoming every obstacle’ 
entered the city on the morning of the 3d of October. 
Leyden was relieved. 

- 


ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE. 

(FROM “ RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.”) 


N Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about 
half-past twelve, the Prince, with his wife 
on his arm, and followed by the ladies and 
gentlemen of his family, was going to the dining-room. 
William the Silent was dressed upon that day, accord¬ 
ing to his usual custom, in a very plain fashion. He 
wore a wide-leaved hat of dark felt, with a silken cord 
round the crown, such as had been worn by the “ Beg¬ 
gars ” in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff en¬ 
circled his neck from which also depended one of the 
Beggars’ medals with the motto, “Fidele jusqu a la 
besace while a loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth, 
over a tawny leather doublet, with wide-slashed un¬ 
derclothes, completed his costume. Gerard presented 
himself at the doorway, and demanded a passport, 
which the Prince directed his secretary to make out 
for him. . . . 

At two o’clock the company rose from the table. 
The Prince led the way, intending to pass to his 
private apartments above. The dining-room, which 
was on the ground floor, opened into a little, square 
vestibule, which communicated through an arched 
passage-way with the main entrance into the court¬ 
yard. The vestibule was also directly at the foot of 
the wooden staircase leading to the next floor, and 
was scarcely six feet in width. Upon its left side, as 


one approached the stairway, was an obscure arch 
sunk deep in the wall, and completely in shadow of 
the door. Behind this arch a portal opened to the 
narrow lane at the side of the house. The stairs 
themselves were completely lighted by a large window 
half-way up the flight. 

The Prince came from the dining-room, and began 
leisurely to ascend. He had only reached the second 
stair, when a man emerged from the sunken arch, 
and, standing within a foot or two of him, discharged 
a pistol full at his heart. Three balls.entered his 
body, one of which, passing quite through him, 
struck with violence upon the wall beyond. The 
Prince exclaimed in French, as he felt the wound: 
“ 0 my God, have mercy upon my soul! 0 my God, 
have mercy upon this poor people ! ” These were the 
last words he ever spake, save that when his sister 
immediately afterwards asked him if he commended 
his soul to Jesus Christ, he faintly answered, “Yes.” 
His master-of-horse had caught him in his arms as 
the fatal shot was fired. 

The Prince was then placed on the stairs for an 
instant, when he immediately began to swoon. He 
was afterwards laid upon a couch in the dining-room, 
where in a few minutes he breathed his last in the 
arms of his wife and sister. 



22 















DISTINGUISHED LECTURED AND HISTORIAN. 

may be doubted whether even Macaulay exhibited more precocious 
ability than did the man who for thirty years has held a foremost 
place among the philosophers and historians of our country, The 
boy who read Csesar and Bollin and Josephus at seven, who trans¬ 
lated Greek at twelve by the aid of a dictionary which gave only 
the Latin equivalents of Greek words, who at seventeen had read 
the whole of Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Sallust, Suetonius, and much ot Livy, 
Cicero, Ovid, Catullus, and Juvenal, and at the same time knew his mathematics up 
to and including much of the work of the sophomore year in college, could read 
the Greek of Plato and Herodotus at sight, kept a diary in Spanish, and read German, 
French, Italian and Portuguese easily, surely this was one of the boys remarkable in 
the history of the world. Not only was John Fiske able to work for twelve hours 
a day and for twelve months in the year at his studies, but in spite of this strenuous 
application he was able to maintain vigorous health and to enter with enthusiasm 
into outdoor life. 

Mr. Fiske was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1842. His original name was 
Edmund Fiske Green, but when his widowed mother became the wife of Edwin W. 
Stoughton, he took the name of one of his maternal ancestors and was henceforth 
known as John Fiske. Until he entered Harvard in 1860 he was an inmate of 
his grandmother’s home in Middletown, Connecticut. But since that time he has 
lived almost continuously in Cambridge. After being graduated from Harvard 
College he spent two years in the law school and opened an office in Boston. 
He never devoted much attention to the practice of law, however, and used 
his office mainly as a convenient literary workshop. He had been married 
while in the law school, and from the first his family depended for support upon 
his diligence and success as a writer. 

His literary work has taken two main directions, his most noted books being 
studies in evolutionary philosophy and treatises upon special features of American 
history. For a number of years he was connected with the faculty at Harvard, as 
lecturer or instructor, and he was for seven years Assistant Librarian, but since 1879 
he has only been associated with the University as a member of its Board of Over¬ 
seers. Thirty-five lectures on the Doctrine of Evolution, delivered at Harvard in 
1871, were afterwards expanded and published under the title of “ Outlines of 
Cosmic Philosophy.” Two of his most notable papers are “ The Destiny of Man ” 



338 































JOHN FISKE. 


339 


Tr i Ide f . G ° C ’ but Mr ‘ Fiske is best known for the fresh and vigorous, 
delightful and philosophical way in which he has written of American history. 

His principal books in this department are “The Beginnings of New England 
“The American Revolution;” “The Discovery of America,” and “ The ^Critical 
Period of American History.” He has written somewhat for young people, notably 
“ The War of Independence,” and perhaps has conferred no greater favor on his 
youthful countrymen than in the preparation of two school books, “ Civil Govern¬ 
ment in the United States ” and “ A History of the United States.” Certainly 
there could be no more delightful innovation than the way in which he introduces 
his young student to the philosophy of government. He tells a lively story of the 
siege and final surrender of a mediaeval town, and how the citizen delegated to make 
the capitulation, a lean, lank, half-starved stuttering fellow, replied to the question of 
why they had rebelled, with the significant phrase, “Tut-tut-tut-too much taxes.” 

The boy who reads this at the opening of his text-book is not likely to imagine 
that his subject is a dry and uninteresting one, and is ready to accept the author’s 
definition of government as the power that lays taxes. These books of Mr. Fiske’s, 
with his numerous contributions to periodicals and his lectures before large audi- 

y , a \ e cl o lie more than perhaps is due to any other one man to 
make the study of American history popular, and to spread among our people 
sound ideas on the theory of our government. With his vigorous health and won¬ 
derful activity it would seem that very much more is still to be expected from a 
man who has already done so much, and it is entirely safe to predict that the name 
of John Fiske will stand in the literary history of this time as one of the most 
remarkable, most fertile, and most useful men of his age. 


K>#- 


LAND DISCOVERED* 


FROM “ THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.” 


Y September 25th, the Admiral’s chief diffi¬ 
culty had come to be the impatience 
of his creAVS at not finding land. On that 
day there was a mirage, or some such illusion, which 
Columbus and all hands supposed to be a coast in 
front of them, and hymns of praise were sung, but at 
dawn next day they were cruelly undeceived. Flights 
of strange birds and other signs of land kept raising 
hopes which Avere presently dashed again, and the 
men passed through alternately hot and cold fits of 
exultation and dejection. Such mockery seemed to 
.show that they Avere entering a realm of enchantment. 
Somebody, perhaps one of the released jail-bird^, 
hinted that if a stealthy thrust should happen some 
night to push the Admiral OA T erboard, it could be 
plausibly said that he had slipped and fallen while 
star-gazing. His situation grew daily more perilous, 
and the fact that he was an Italian commanding 



Spaniards did not help him. Perhaps what saved 
him Avas their vague belief in his superior knoAvledge ; 
they may haA T e felt that they should need him in 
going back. 

At daybreak the boats were lowered and Columbus, 
with a large part of his company, Avent ashore. 
Upon every side were trees of unknown kinds, and 
the landscape seemed exceedingly beautiful. Confi¬ 
dent that they must have attained the object for 
Avhich they set sail, the crews Avere Avild with exulta¬ 
tion. Their heads Avere dazed with fancies of 
princely fortunes close at hand. The officers em¬ 
braced Columbus or kissed his hands, while the sailors 
threw themselves at his feet, craving pardon and 
favor. 

These proceedings Avere watched with unutterable 
amazement and awe by a multitude of men, women 
and children of cinnamon hue, different from any 


* Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin Sl Co. 














340 


JOHN FISKE. 


kind of people the Spaniards had ever seen. All 
were stark naked and most of them were more or 
less greased and painted. They thought that the 
ships were sea-monsters and the white men super¬ 
natural creatures descended from the sky. At first 
they fled in terror as these formidable beings came 
ashore, but presently, as they found themselves un¬ 
molested, curiosity began to overcome fear, and they 
slowly approached the Spaniards, stopping at every 
few paces to prostrate themselves in adoration. 
After a time, as the Spaniards received them with 
encouraging nods and smiles, they waxed bold enough 
to come close to the visitors and pass their hands 
over them, doubtless to make sure that all this marvel 
was reality and not a mere vision. Experiences in 
Africa had revealed the eagerness of barbarians to 
trade off their possessions for trinkets, and now the 


Spaniards began exchanging glass beads and hawks’ 
bells for cotton yarn, tame parrots, and small gold 
ornaments. 

Some sort of conversation in dumb show went on, 
and Columbus naturally interpreted everything in 
such wise as to fit his theories. Whether the natives 
understood him or not when he asked them where 
they got their gold, at any rate they pointed to the 
south, and thus confirmed Columbus in his suspicion 
that he had come to some island a little to the north 
of the opulent Cipango. He soon found that it was 
a small island, and he understood the name of it to 
be Guanahani. He took formal possession of it for 
Castile, just as the discoverers of the Cape Verde 
islands and the Guinea coasts had taken possession 
of those places for Portugal; and he gave it a 
Christian name, San Salvador. 


O* 


THE FEDERAL CONVENTION* 

FROM “ THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 


HE Federal Convention did wisely in with¬ 
holding its debates from the knowledge of 
the people. It was felt that discussion 
would be more untrammeled, and that its result ought 
to go before the country as the collective and unani¬ 
mous voice of the convention. 

There was likely to be wrangling enough among 
themselves; but should their scheme be unfolded, 
bit by bit, before its parts could be viewed in their 
mutual relations, popular excitement would become 
intense, there might be riots, and an end would be 
put to that attitude of mental repose so necessary for 
the constructive work that was to be done. It was 
thought best that the scheme should be put forth as 
a completed whole, and that for several years, even, 
until the new system of government should have had 
a fair trial, the traces of the individual theories and 
preferences concerned in its formation should not be 
revealed. 

For it was generally assumed that a system of 
government new in some important respects would be 
proposed by the convention, and while the people 
awaited the result the wildest speculations and 
rumors were current. A few hoped, and many 
feared, that some scheme of monarchy would be 


established. Such surmises found their way across 
the ocean, and hopes were expressed in England that, 
should a king be chosen, it might be a younger son 
of George III. It was even hinted, with alarm, 
that, through gratitude to our recent allies, we might 
be persuaded to offer the crown to some member of 
the royal family of France. No such thoughts were 
entertained, however, by any person present in the 
convention. Some of the delegates came with the 

o 

design of simply amending the articles of confedera¬ 
tion by taking away from the States the power of 
regulating commerce, and intrusting this power to 
Congress. Others felt that if the work were not 
done thoroughly now another chance might never be 
offered; and these men thought it necessary to 
abolish the confederation and establish a federal 
republic, in which the general government should act 
directly upon the people. The difficult problem 
was how to frame a plan of this sort which people 
could be made to understand and adopt. At the 
very outset some of the delegates began to exhibit 
symptoms of that peculiar kind of moral cowardice 
which is wont to afflict free governments, and of 
which American history furnishes many instructive 
It was suggested that palliatives and half- 



examples. 
Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 












JOHN FISKE. 


341 


measures would be far more likely to find favor with 
the people than any thoroughgoing reform, when 
Washington suddenly interposed with a brief but im¬ 
mortal speech, which ought to be blazoned in letters 
of gold and posted on the wall of every American 
assembly that shall meet to nominate a candidate, or 
declare a policy, or pass a law, so long as the weak¬ 
ness of human nature endures. Rising from his Pre¬ 
sident’s chair, his tall figure drawn up to its full height, 
he exclaimed in tones unwontedly solemn with sup¬ 
pressed emotion : “ It is too probable that no plan we 
propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful 
conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, 
we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we 
afterward defend our work ? Let us raise a standard 
to which the wise and the honest can repair; the 
event is in the hand of God.” 

This outburst of noble eloquence carried conviction 


to every one, and henceforth we do not hear that any 
attempt was avowedly made to avoid the issues as 
they came up. It was a most wholesome tonic. It 
braced up the convention to high resolves, and im¬ 
pressed upon all the delegates that they were in a 
situation where faltering and trifling were both wicked 
and dangerous. From that moment the mood in 
which they worked caught something from the 
glorious spirit of Washington. There was need of 
such high purpose, for two plans were presently laid 
before the meeting, which, for a moment, brought 
out one of the chief elements of antagonism existing 
between the States, and which at first seemed irrec¬ 
oncilable. It was the happy compromise which 
united and harmonized these two plans that smoothed 
the further work of the convention, and made it 
possible for a stable and powerful government to be 
constructed. 






JOHN BACH McMASTER. 



HISTORIAN OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. 

OHN BACH McMASTER is one of the few men who excel in 
widely different fields. To be a teacher of English grammar, a 
college instructor in civil engineering, to do the work of a specialist 
in the United States Coast Survey, to write a monumental history 
and to build up a great department in a leading university, surely 
this is a sufficiently long catalogue for a man forty-five years 
old. The father of Prof. McMaster was, at the beginning of the Civil War, a 
banker and planter at New Orleans. The son, however, grew up in the Northern 
metropolis, and was graduated at the College of the City of New York at the age 
of twenty, in 1872. After a year devoted to teaching grammar in that institution 
he took up the study of civil engineering, and began, in the autumn of 1873, the 
work of preparing his “History of the People of the United States from the 
Revolution to the Civil War.” 

He was appointed, in 1877, Instructor in Civil Engineering at Princeton, and 
became, in 1883, Professor of American History in the University of Pennsylvania. 
Besides the four volumes of his “History” already published, he has written a 
“Life of Benjamin Franklin” for the “Men of Letters Series,” and has been a 
frequent contributor upon historical topics to the leading periodicals. His “History” 
is not a story of political intrigue, of the petty jealousies of neighboring communi¬ 
ties, of our quarrels with each other or with the Indians, but tells in a clear and 
strikingly pictorial manner the story of the people themselves, of how tliev lived 
and dressed, what they ate, what were their pleasures, their social customs, how 
they worshipped, how they grew to be a mighty nation and became the people that 
we are. It is a wonderful story, and not only is every page filled with living 
interest, but any chapter might well be a monument to the painstaking accuracy, 
the devoted labor, the historical insight, and the literary skill of the author. But 
if Prof. McMaster has been in love with his work as a historian he has none the 
less been devoted to his office as an instructor of youth. During the years in which 
he has filled a chair in the University of Pennsylvania, the department of history 
of the United States has assumed sucli proportions that it may fairly claim to out¬ 
rank any similar department in any other institution in the country. In this way 
and as a lecturer before bodies of teachers, Prof. McMaster has held a foremost 
jdace in the movement which has demanded, and successfully demanded, that in the 
lower schools greater attention shall be paid to the history and institutions of our 

342 























JOHN BACH McMASTER. 


343 


own country, and which is bringing about a more intelligent patriotism and a wide¬ 
spread interest in the way in which we govern ourselves. The boy who applies for 
admission to the University of Pennsylvania, if he imagines that the history of his 
country consists of a list of dates of explorations, battles, and of presidents, and of 
the names of generals and politicians, will be astonished when he is asked to draw 
a map showing how the United States obtained the various portions of its territory, 
to tell what were the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and to outline the 
relations between the President and the two houses of Congress in our government. 
But the trembling applicant will find his blundering answers leniently judged, and 
when he looks back from the eminence of his graduation day upon this time of 
trial, he will agree that the view of history taken by Prof. McMaster is the true 
one, and that no man has done more than he to bring the intelligent people of our 
time to that opinion. 

-- 


THE AMERICAN WORKMAN IN 1784* 

(from “a history of the people of the united states.”) 


ERE can, however, be no doubt that a 
wonderful amelioration lias taken place 
since that day in the condition of the poor. 
Their houses were meaner, their food was coarser, 
their clothing was of commoner stuff; their wages 
were, despite the depreciation that has gone on in the 
value of money, lower by one-lialf than at present. 
A man who performed what would be called un¬ 
skilled labor, who sawed wood, dug ditches, who 
mended roads, who mixed mortar, who carried boards 
to the carpenter and bricks to the mason, or helped 
to cut hay in harvest-time, usually received as the 
fruit of his daily toil two shillings. Sometimes when 
the laborers were few he was paid more, and became 
the envy of his fellows if at the end of a week he 
took home to his family fifteen shillings, a sum now 
greatly exceeded by four dollars. Yet all authori¬ 
ties atrree that in 1784 the hire of workmen was 
twice as great as in 1774. 

On such a pittance it was only by the strictest 
economy that a mechanic kept his children from 
starvation and himsell from jail. In the low and 
dingy rooms which he called his home were wanting 
many articles of adornment and of use now to be 
found in the dwelling of the poorest of his class. 
Sand sprinkled on the floor did duty as a carpet. 
There was no glass on his table, there was no china 
in his cupboard, there were no prints on his wall. 
What a stove was he did not know, coal he had never 
seen, matches he had never heard of. Over a fire of 


fragments of barrels and boxes, which he lit with 
the sparks struck from a flint, or with live coals 
brought from a neighbor’s hearth, his wife cooked 
up a rude meal and served it in pewter dishes. 

He rarely tasted fresh meat as often as once in a 
week, and paid for it a much higher price than his 
posterity. Everything, indeed, which ranked as a 
staple of life was very costly. Corn stood at three 
shillings the bushel, wheat at eight and six pence, 
an assize of bread was four pence, a pound of salt 
pork was ten pence. Many other commodities now 
to be seen on the tables of the poor were either quite 
unknown or far beyond the reach of his scanty purse. 
Unenviable is the lot of that man who cannot, in the 
height of the season, when the wharfs and markets 
are heaped with baskets and crates of fruit, spare 
three cents for a pound of grapes, or five cents for 
as many peaches, or, when Sunday comes round, in¬ 
dulge his family with watermelons or cantaloupes. 
One hundred years ago the wretched fox-grape was 
the only kind that found its way to market, and was 
the luxury of the rich. Among the fruits and vege¬ 
tables of which no one had then even heard are can¬ 
taloupes, many varieties of peaches and pears, toma¬ 
toes and rhubarb, sweet corn, the cauliflower, the 
eggplant, head lettuce, and okra. On the window 
benches of every tenement-house may be seen grow¬ 
ing geraniums and verbenas, flowers not known a 
century ago. In truth, the best-kept gardens were 
then rank with hollyhocks and sunflowers, roses and 


* Copyright, D. Appleton & Co. 











344 


JOHN BACH McMASTER. 


snowballs, lilacs, pinks, tulips, and, above all, the Jeru¬ 
salem cherry, a plant once much admired, but now 
scarcely seen. 

If the food of an artisan would now be thought 
coarse, his clothes would be thought abominable. A 
pair of yellow buckskin or leathern breeches, a checked 
shirt, a red flannel jacket, a rusty felt hat cocked up 
at the corners, shoes of neats-skin set off* with huge 
buckles of brass, and a leathern apron, comprised 
his scanty wardrobe. The leather he smeared with 
grease to keep it soft and flexible. His sons fol¬ 
lowed in his footsteps, and were apprenticed to neigh¬ 
boring tradesmen. His daughter went out to ser¬ 
vice. She performed, indeed, all the duties at present 


exacted from women of her class; but with them 
were coupled many others rendered useless by the 
great improvement that has taken place in the con¬ 
veniences of life. 

She mended the clothes, she did up the ruffs, she 
ran on errands from one end of the town to the other, 
she milked the cows, made the butter, walked ten 
blocks for a pail of water, -spun flax for the family 
linen, and, when the year was up, received ten pounds 
for her wages. Yet, small as was her pay, she had, 
before bestowing herself in marriage upon the footman 
or the gardener, laid away in her stocking enough 
guineas and joes to buy a few chairs, a table, and 
a bed. 


Of 


“ THE MINISTER IN NEW ENGLAND.”* 


(FROM “ A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.”) 


1H as the doctors stood in the good graces 
of their fellow-men, the ministers formed 
a yet more respected class of New Eng¬ 
land society. In no other section of the country had 
religion so firm a hold on the affections of the people. 
Nowhere else were men so truly devout, and the min¬ 
isters held in such high esteem. It had, indeed, from 
the days of the founders of the colony been the 
fashion among New Englanders to look to the pastor 
with profound reverence, not unmingled with awe. 
He was not to them as other men were. He was the 
just man made perfect; the oracle of divine will; 
the sure guide to truth. The heedless one who ab¬ 
sented himself from the preaching on a Sabbath was 
hunted up by the tithing-man, was admonished 
severely, and, if he still persisted in his evil ways, 
was fined, exposed in the stocks, or imprisoned in the 
cage. To sit patiently on the rough board seats while 
the preacher turned his hour-glass for the third time, 
and with his voice husky from shouting, and the 
sweat pouring in streams down his face, went on for 
an hour more, was a delectable privilege. In such a 
community the authority of the reverend man was 
almost supreme. To speak disrespectfully concern¬ 
ing him, to jeer at his sermons, or to laugh at his odd 
ways, was sure to bring down on the offender a heavy 



fine. His advice was often sought on matters of 
State, nor did he hesitate to give, unasked, his opin¬ 
ion on what he considered the arbitrary acts of the 
high functionaries of the province. In the years 
immediately preceding the war the power of the 
minister in matters of government and politics had 
been greatly impaired by the rise of that class of lay¬ 
men in the foremost ranks of which stood Otis and 
Hancock and Samuel Adams. Yet his spiritunl in¬ 
fluence was as great as ever. He was still a member 
of the most learned and respected class in a commu¬ 
nity by no means ignorant. He was a divine, and 
came of a family of divines. Not a few of the 
preachers who witnessed the Revolution could trace 
descent through an unbroken line of ministers, stretch¬ 
ing back from son to father for three generations, to 
some canting, psalm-singing Puritan who bore arms 
with distinction on the great day at Naseby, or had 
prayed at the head of Oliver’s troops, and had, at the 
restoration, when the old soldiers of the protector 
were turning their swords into reaping-hooks and 
their pikes into pruning-knives, come over to New 
England to seek that liberty of worship not to be 
found at home. Such a man had usually received 
an education at Harvard or at Yale, and would in 
these days be thought a scholar of high attainments. 


* Copyright, D. Appleton & Co. 













































































































































































































































* 
























. 











^i'VCOB S 


JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS 


— 






























FRANCES MIRIAM WHITCHER. 


THE “WIDOW BEDOTT” AND “WIDOW SPRIGGINS.” 


T was back in the early forties in “Neal’s Gazette” that the “Widow 
Bedott Table Talk ” series of articles began to attract attention, and 
the question arose, Who is the Widow Bedott? for no one knew at 
that time that Mrs. Whitcher was the real author behind this nom- 
de-plume. James Neal himself—the well-known author of “Char¬ 
coal Sketches” and publisher of the magazine above referred to— 
was so struck with the originality and clearness of the first of the series when sub¬ 
mitted that he sought a correspondence with the author, thinking it was a man, and 
addressed her as “My dear Bedott.” Mrs. Whitcher often insisted that she must 
cease to write, as her humorous sketches were not relished by some of her neighbors 
whom they touched, but Mr. Neal would not hear to it. In a letter of September 
10, 1846, he wrote: “It is a theory of mine that those gifted with truly humorous 
genius like yourself are more useful as moralists, philosophers and teachers than 
whole legions of the gravest preachers. They speak more effectually to the general 
ear and heart, even though they who hear are not aware of the fact that they are 
imbibing wisdom.” Further on he adds: “I would add that Mr. Godey called on 
me to inquire as to the authorship of the “Bedott Papers,” wishing evidently to 
obtain you for a correspondent to the “Ladies’ Book.” 

For richness of humor and masterly handling of the Yankee dialect, certainly, 
the “Widow Bedott” and the “Widow Spriggins” occupy a unique space in humor¬ 
ous literature, and the influence she has exercised on modern humorists is more in 
evidence than most readers are aware of. Her husband, “Hezekiah Bedott,” is a 
character who will live alongside of “ Josiah Allen” as one of the prominent heroes 
of the humorous literature of our country. In fact, no reader of both these authors 
Avill fail to suspect that Miss Marietta Holley used “Hezekiah” as a model for her 
“Josiah;” while the redoubtable widow herself was enough similiar to “Samantha 
Allen” to have been her natural, as she, perhaps, was her literary, grandmother. 
Nor was Miss Holley alone in following her lead. Ever since the invention of 
“Hezekiah Bedott” by Mrs. Whitcher, an imaginary person of some sort, behind 
whom the author might conceal his own identity, has seemed to be a necessity to 
our humorists, as witness the noms-de-plume of “Artemus Ward,” “Josh Bil¬ 
lings,” “Mark Twain,” etc., under which our greatest American humorists have 

written. 

Mrs. Whitcher was the daughter of Mr. Lewis Berry, and was born at Whitesboro, 

345 













































346 


FRANCES MIRIAM WHITCHER. 


New York, 1811, and died there in 1852. As a child she was unusually preco¬ 
cious. Before she learned her letters, even before she was four years old, she was 
making little rhymes and funny stories, some of which are preserved by her rela¬ 
tives. Her education was obtained in the village school of Whitesboro, and she 
began to contribute at an early age stories and little poems to the papers. After 
she had won considerable literary fame she was married, in 1847, to the Bev. Ben¬ 
jamin W. Wliitcher, pastor of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Elmira, New 
York, where she resided with her husband for a period of three years, continuing 
to contribute her humorous papers to the magazine, and taking as her models her 
acquaintances at Elmira, as she had been accustomed to do at Whitesboro. The 
people of Elmira, however, were not so ready to be victimized, and turned against 
her such shafts of persecution and even insult for her ludicrous pictures of them as 
to destroy her happiness and her husband’s usefulness as a minister to an extent 
that they were compelled to leave Elmira, and they removed to Whitesboro in 1850, 
where, as stated above, she died two years later. 

Mrs. Wliitcher was something of an artist as well as a writer and illustrated cer¬ 
tain of her sketches with her own hands. During her life none of her works were 
published except in magazines and periodicals, but after her death these contribu¬ 
tions were collected and published in book form; the first entitled “ The Widow 
Bedott Papers,” appearing in 1855, with an introduction by Alice B. Neal. In 
1857 came “ The Widow Spriggins, Mary Allen and Other Sketches,” edited by 
Mrs. M. L. Ward Wliitcher with a memoir of the author. We publish in con¬ 
nection with this sketch the poem “ Widow Bedott to Elder Sniffles ” and also her 
own humorous comments on some of her poetry, about her husband Hezekiali, which 
she wrote to a friend, pausing as the various stanzas suggest, to throw in amusing 
side lights on neighborhood character and gossip. 


WIDOW BEDOTT TO 

(from THE “ WIDOW 

REVEREND sir, I do declare 
It drives me most to frenzy, 

To think of you a lying there 
Down sick with influenzy. 

A body’d thought it was enough 
To mourn your wife’s departer, 

Without sich trouble as this ere 
To come a follerin’ arter. 

But sickness and affliction, are 
Sent by a wise creation, 

And always ought to be underwent 
By patience and resignation. 


ELDER SNIFFLES. 

BEDOTT PAPERS.”) 

0 I could to your bedside fly, 

And wipe your weeping eyes, 

And do my best to cheer you up, 

If t wouldn’t create surprise. 

It’s a world of trouble we tarry in, 

But, Elder, don’t despair ; 

That you may soon be movin’ again 
Is constantly my prayer. 

Both sick and well, you may depend 
You’ll never be forgot 
By your faithful and affectionate friend, 

Priscilla Pool Bedott. 








FRANCES MIRIAM WHITCHER. 


347 


THE WIDOW’S POETRY ABOUT HEZEKIAH AND HER COMMENTS ON THE SAME. 


(from “widow bedott papers.”) 


ES,—he was one o’ the best men that ever 
trod shoe-leather, husband was, though 
Miss Jenkins says (she ’twas Poll Bing¬ 
ham), she says, I never found it out till after he died, 
but that’s the consarndest lie that ever was told, 
though it’s jest a piece with everything else she says 
about me. I guess if everybody could see the poitry 
I writ to his mem’ry, nobody wouldn’t think I dident 
set store by him. Want to hear it? Well, I’ll see 
if I can say it; it ginerally affects me wonderfully, 
seems to harrer up my feelin’s; but I’ll try. It be¬ 
gins as follers :— 

He never jawed in all his life, 

He never was onkind,— 

And (tho’ I say it that was his wife) 

Such men you seldom find. 

(That’s as true as the Scripturs ; I never knowed him 
to say a harsh word.) 

I never changed my single lot,— 

I thought ’twould be a sin— 

(Though widder Jinkins says it’s because I never had 
a chance.) Now ’tain’t for me to say whether I ever 
had a numerous number o’ chances or not, but there’s 
them livin’ that might tell if they wos a mind to ; why, 
this poitry was writ on account of being joked about 
Major Coon, three years after husband died. I guess 
the ginerality o’ folks knows what was the nature o’ 
Majors Coon’s feelin’s towards me, tho’ his wife and 
Miss Jinkins does say I tried to ketch him. The fact 
is, Miss Coon feels wonderfully cut up ’cause she 
knows the Major took her “ Jack at a pinch,”—seein’ 
he couldent get such as he wanted, he took such as he 
could get,—but I goes on to say— 

I never changed my single lot, 

I thought ’twould be a sin,— 

For I thought so much o’ Deacon Bedott, 

I never got married agin. 



Tell the men that’s after me 
To ketch me if they can. 

If I was sick a single jot, 

He called the doctor in— 

That’s a fact.—he used to be scairt to death if any¬ 
thing ailed me. Now only jest think,—widder 
Jinkins told Sam Pendergrasses wife (she ’twas Sally- 
Smith) that she guessed the deacon dident set no great 
store by me, or he wouldent went off to confrence 
meetin’, when I was down with the fever. The truth 
is, they couldent git along without him no way. Parson 
Potter seldom went to confrence meetin’, and when 
he wa’n’t there, who was ther’, pray tell, that 
knowed enough to take the lead if husband 
dident do it ? Deacon Kenipe hadent no gift, and 
Deacon Crosby hadent no inclination, and so it all 
come onto Deacon Bedott,—and he was always ready 
and willin’ to do his duty, you know; as long as he 
was able to stand on his legs he continued to go to 
confrence meetin’; why, I’ve knowed that man to go 
when he couldent scarcely crawl on account o’ the 
pain in the spine of his back. 

He had a wonderful gift, and he wa’n’t a man to 
keep his talents hid up in a napkin,—so you see 
’twas from a sense o’ duty he went when I was sick, 
whatever Miss Jinkins may say to the contrary. But 
where was I ? Oh !— 

If I was sick a single jot, 

He called the doctor in— 

I sot so much store by Deacon Bedott 
I never got married agin. 

A wonderful tender heart he had, 

That felt for all mankind,— 

It made him feel amazin’ bad 
To see the world so blind. 

Whiskey and rum he tasted not— 


If ever a hasty word he spoke, 
His anger dident last, 

But vanished like tobacker smoke 
Afore the wintry blast. 

And since it was my lot to be 
The wife of such a man, 


That’s as true as the Scripturs,—but if you’ll believe 
it, Betsy, Ann Kenipe told my Melissy that Miss 
Jinkins said one day to their house how’t she’d seen 
Deacon Bedott high, time and agin! did you ever! 
Well, I’m glad nobody don’t pretend to mind anything 
she says. I’ve knowed Poll Bingham from a gal, and 









348 


FRANCES MIRIAM WHITCHER. 


she never knowed how to speak the truth—besides 
she always had a partikkeler spite against husband and 
me, and between us tew I’ll tell you why if you won’t 
mention it, for I make it a pint never to say nothin’ 
to injure nobody. Well, she was a ravin’-distracted 
after my husband herself, but it’s a long story, I’ll tell 
you about it some other time, and then you’ll know 
why widder Jinkins is etarnally runnin’ me down. 
See,—where had I got to ? Oh, I remember now,— 

Whisky and rum he tasted not,— 

He thought it was a sin,— 

I thought so much o’ Deacon Bedott 
I never got married agin. 

But now he’s dead ! the thought is killin’, 

My grief I can’t control— 

He never left a single shillin’ 

His widder to console. 

But that wa’n’t his fault—he was so out o’ health for 
a number o’ year afore he died, it ain’t to be wondered 
at he dident lay up nothin’—however, it dident give 
him no great oneasiness,—he never cared much for 
airthly riches, though Miss Pendergrass says she heard 
Miss Jinkins say Deacon Bedott was as tight as the 
skin on his back,—begrudged folks their vittals when 
they come to his house ! did you ever ! why, he was 
the hull-souldest man I ever see in all my born days. 
If I’d such a husband as Bill Jinkins was, I’d hold 
my tongue about my neighbors’ husbands. He was 


a dretful mean man, used to git drunk every day of 
his life, and he had an awful high temper,—used to 
swear like all possest when he got mad,—and I’ve 
heard my husband say (and he wa’n’t a man that ever 
said anything that wa’n’t true),—I’ve heard him say 
Bill Jinkins would cheat his own father out of his eye 
teeth if he had a chance. Where was I ? Oh ! 
“ His widder to console,”—ther ain’t but one more 
verse, ’tain’t a very lengthy poim. When Parson 
Potter read it, he says to me, says he,—“ What did 
you stop so soon for?”—but Miss Jinkins told the 
Crosby’s she thought I’d better a’ stopt afore I’d 
begun,—she’s a purty critter to talk so, I must say. 
I'd like to see some poitry o’ hern,—I guess it would 
be astonishin’ stuff; find mor’n all that, she said there 
wa’n’t a word o’ truth in the hull on’t,—said I never 
cared tuppence for the deacon. What an everlastin’ 
lie! Why, when he died, I took it so hard I went 
deranged, and took on so for a spell they was afraid 
they should have to send me to a Lunatic Arsenal. 
But that’s a painful subject, I won’t dwell on’t. 

I conclude as follers :— 

I'll never change my single lot,— 

I think ’twould be a sin,— 

The inconsolable widder o’ Deacon Bedott 
Don’t intend to git married agin. 

Excuse my cryin’—my feelin’s always overcomes me 
1 so when I say that poitry— O-o-o-o-o-o ! 






CHARLES F. BROWNE. 


(artemus ward). 



RTEMUS WARD first revealed to the world that humor is a charac¬ 
teristic trait of the Yankee, and he was the first to succeed in pro¬ 
ducing a type of comic literature distinctively American, purely the 
product of his original genius. 

It is impossible to analyze his jokes or to tell why they are irresist¬ 
ibly funny, but it would be generally admitted that his best things 
are as much creations of genius as masterpieces of art are. 

He was one of the kindest and most generous of men ; he used his keen wit to 
smite evil customs and to satirize immoral deeds, and he went through his short life 
enjoying above everything to make people laugh and to laugh himself, but with all 
his play of wit there was a tinge of melancholy in his nature and a tendency to do 
the most unexpected things, a tendency which he never tried to control. He was 
born in Waterford, Maine, in 1834, and he came honestly by a view of humor from 
his father’s side. He had only a most meagre school education, and at fourteen he 
set himself to learn the printer’s trade, becoming one of the best typesetters in the 
country. 

He drifted from place to place and finally became one of the staff of the “ Com¬ 
mercial ” at Toledo, Ohio, where he first displayed his peculiar richness of humor 
in his news reports. In 1857 he became local editor of the “Plain-Dealer” in 
Cleveland, and it was here his sketches were first signed Artemus Ward, a name 
which he took from a peculiar character who called on him once in his Cleveland 
office. He is described at this time as being in striking degree gawky and slouchy, 
with yellowish, straight hair, a loose swaggering gait, and strangely ill-fitting clothes, 
though as his popularity and position rose he took on more cultivated manners and 
grew very particular regarding his dress. 

His first attempts at lecturing were not marked with success and lie was forced to 
explain his jokes to his audiences to make the desired laugh come, but he soon 
attracted attention and multitudes flocked to hear the “ grate showman,” with his 
“ moral wax figgers.” In 1863 he crossed the continent and on this trip he collected 
material for his most humorous lectures and for the best of his chapters. 

The Mormons furnished him with the material for his most telling lecture, and it 
was a mark of his genius that he was irresistibly drawn to Utah to study this pecu¬ 
liar type of American society. 


349 

































350 


CHARLES F. BROWNE. 


He went to England in 1866, where, though in failing health, ending in prema¬ 
ture death, he created almost a sensation and had flattering successes. The “ Mor¬ 
mons ” never failed to fill a hall and always carried his audiences by storm. 

Borne of his most brilliant articles were written for “Punch,” and the American 
humorist was recognized as a typical genius ; but he was a dying man while he was 
making his London audiences laugh at his spontaneous wit, and his life came to an 
end at Southampton, January 23, 1867. 

He provided in his will for the establishment of an asylum for jndnters and for the 
education of their orphan children, an action which revealed, as many acts of his 
life had done, the kindly human spirit of the humorist. 

His published books, which owe much of their charm to his characteristic spell¬ 
ing, are as follows: “ Artemus Ward, His Book,” and “ Artemus Ward, His 
Travels” (1865), “Artemus Ward in London” (1867), “Artemus Ward’s Lecture, 
as delivered in Egyptian Hall, London,” edited by T. W. Robertson and E. P. 
Hingston (1869), and “ Artemus Ward, His Works Complete,” with biographical 
sketch by Melville D. Landon (1875). 




ARTEMUS WARD VISITS THE SHAKERS. 



R. SHAKER,” sed I, “ you see before you a 
Babe in the Woods, so to speak, and he 
axes a shelter of you.” 

“ Yay,” said the Shaker, and he led the way into 
the house, another bein’ sent to put my horse and 
wagon under kiver. 

A solum female, lookin’ somewhat like a last year’s 
bean-pole stuck into a long meal-bag, cum in and axed 
me was I athirst and did I hunger? To which I 
asserted, “ A few.” She went orf, and I endeavored 
to open a conversation with the old man. 

Elder, I spect,” sed I. 

Yay,” he said. 

“ Health’s good, I reckon ? ” 

“ Yay.” 

“ What’s the wages of a Elder, when he under¬ 
stands his bizness—or do you devote your sarvices 
gratooitous ? ” 

“ Yay.” 

“ Storm nigh, sir ? ” 

“ Yay.” 

' “ If the storm continues there’ll be a mess under¬ 
foot, hay ? ” 

“ Yay.” 

“ If I may be so bold, kind sir, what’s the price of 
that pecooler kind of wesket you wear, includin’ 
trimmin’s ? ” 

“ Yay.” 


u 


u 


I pawsed a minit, and, tliinkin’ I’d be faseshus with 
him and see how that would go, I slapt him on the 
shoulder, burst into a hearty larf, and told him that as 
a yayer he had no livin’ ekel. 

He jumped up as if bilin’ water had been squirted 
into his ears, groaned, rolled his eyes up tords the 
sealin’ and sed: 

“ You’re a man of sin ! ” 

He then walked out of the room. 

Directly thar cum in two young Shakeresses, as 
putty and slick lookin’ galls as I ever met. It is troo 
they was drest in meal-bags like the old one I’d met 
previsly, and their shiny, silky hair was hid from sight 
by long, white caps, such as I spose female gosts wear. 
but their e 3 7 es sparkled like diamonds, their cheeks 
was like roses, and they was charmin’ enuff to make a 
man throw stuns at his grandmother, if they axed him 
to. They commenst clearing away the dishes, casting 
shy glances at me all the time. I got excited. I 
forget Betsey Jane in my rapter, and sez I: 

“ My pretty dears, how air you ? ’* 

“ We air well,” they solumly sed. 

Where is the old man?” said I, in a soft voice. 
“ Of whom dost thou speak—Brother Uriah ? ” 

“ I m ean that gay and festive cuss who calls me a 
man of sin. fehouldn’t wonder if his name wasn’t 
Uriah.” 


“ He has retired.” 










CHARLES F. BROWNE. 


351 


“ Wall, my pretty dears,” sez I, “ let’s have some 
fun. Let’s play puss in the corner. What say ? ” 

“ Air you a Skaker, sir?” they asked. 

“Wall, my pretty dears, I haven’t arrayed my 
proud form in a long weskit yet, but if they wus all 
like you perhaps I’d jine ’em. As it is, I am willing 
to be Shaker protemporary.” 

They was full of fun. 1 seed that at fust, only they 


was a little skeery. I tawt ’em puss in the corner, and 
sich like plase, and we had a nice time, keepin’ quiet 
of course, so that the old man shouldn’t hear. When 
we broke up, sez I: 

“ My pretty dears, ear I go, you have no objections 
have you ? to a innersent kiss at partin’ ? ” 

“ Yay,” they said, and I—yayed. 


-KH— 

ARTEMUS WARD AT THE TOMB OF SHAKESPEARE. 


YE been lingerin’ by the tomb of the 
lamented Shakespeare. 

It is a success. 

I do not hes’tate to pronounce it as such. 

You may make any use of this opinion that you see 
fit. If you think its publication will subswerve the 
cause of literatoor, you may publicate. 

I told my wife Betsey, when I left home, that I 
should go to the birthplace of the orthur of Otlieller 
and other Plays. She said that as long as I kept out 
of Newgate she didn’t care where I went. “ But,” I 
said, “ don’t you know he was the greatest Poit 
that ever lived ? Not one of these common poits, like 
that young idyit who writes verses to our daughter? 
about the roses as groses, and the breezes as blowses 
—but a Boss poit—also a philosopher, also a man who 
knew a great deal about everything.” 

Yes. I’ve been to Stratford onto the Avon, the 
Birth-place of Shakespeare. Mr. S. is now no more. 
He’s been dead over three hundred (300) years. The 
peple of his native town are justly proud of him. They 
cherish his mem’ry, and them as sell picturs of his 
birth-place, &c., make it prof’tible cherishin’ it. Al¬ 
most everybody buys a pictur to put into their 
Albiom. 

“ And this,” I said, as I stood in the old church¬ 
yard at Stratford, beside a Tombstone, “ this marks 
the spot where lies William W. Shakespeare. Alars! 
and this is the spot where—” 

“ You’ve got the wrong grave,” said a man—a 



worthy villager; “ Shakespeare is buried inside the 
church.” , 

“ Oh,” I said, “a boy told me this was it.” The 
boy larfed and put the shillin’ I'd given him into his 
left eye in a inglorious manner, and commenced mov¬ 
ing backwards towards the street. 

I pursood and captered him, and, after talking to 
him a spell in a sarkastic stile, I let him went. 

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564. 
All the commentators, Shakesperian scholars, etsetry, 
are agreed on this, which is about the only thing they 
are agreed on in regard to him, except that his mantle 
hasn’t fallen onto any poet or dramatist hard enough 
to hurt said poet or dramatist much. And there is no 
doubt if these commentators and persons continner in¬ 
vestigatin’ Shakespeare’s career, we shall not in doo 
time, know anything about it at all. When a mere 
lad little William attended the Grammar School, be¬ 
cause, as he said, the Grammar School wouldn’t attend 
him. This remarkable remark coming from one so 
young and inexperunced, set peple to thinkin’ there 
might be something in this lad. He subsequently 
wrote Hamlet and George Barnwell. When his kind 
teacher went to London to accept a position in the 
offices of the Metropolitan Railway, little William was 
chosen by his fellow-pupils to deliver a farewell ad¬ 
dress. “ Go on, sir,” he said, “ in a glorous career. 
Be like a eagle, and soar, and the soarer you get the 
more we shall be gratified 1 That’s so.” 












HENRY WHEELER SHAW. 


(“ JOSH BILLINGS.”) 



T is astonishing what effect is produced by peculiarities of form or 
manner. It may be true that the writings of Thomas Carlyle owe 
much of their force and vigor to his disregard for grammatical rules 
and his peculiar arrangement of words and sentences; but one of the 
most surprising instances of this kind is in the fact that the “Essay 
on the Mule, by Josh Billings,” received no attention whatever, 
while the same contribution transformed into the “Essa on the Muel, bi Josh 
Billings,” was eagerly copied by almost every paper in the country. Josh Billings 
once said that “Chaucer was a great poit, but he couldn’t spel,” and apparently it 
was Mr. Shaw’s likeness, in this respect, to the author of “Canterbury Tales” 
which won him much of his fame. 

He was the son of a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, born in 1818, 
and entered Hamilton College; but being captivated by stories of Western life and 
adventure, abandoned college to seek his fortune in the West. The fortune was 
slow in coming, and he worked as a laborer on steamboats on the Ohio, and as a 
farmer, and finally drifted back to Poughkeepsie, New York, as an auctioneer. 
Here he wrote his first contribution to a periodical, “The Essa on the Muel,” which 
has been above mentioned. 

The popularity of the revised form of this classic of poor spelling induced him 
to publish “Josh Billings’ Farmers’ Allminax,” which continued for ten years, 
having during a part of the time a circulation of one hundred and twenty-seven 
thousand copies per annum. In 1863 Mr. Shaw entered the lecture-field. His 
lectures being a series of pithy sayings without care or order, delivered in an 
apparently awkward manner. The quaintness and drollery of his discourse won 
very great popularity. For twenty years he was a regular contributor of “The 
New York Weekly,” and it is said that the articles which appeared in “The 
Century Magazine,” under the signature of “Uncle Esek,” were his. His published 
books are “Josh Billings, His Sayings;” “Josh Billings on Ice;” “Everybody’s 
Friend;” “Josh Billings’ Complete Works,” and “Josh Billings’ Spice Box.” 

Mr. Shaw died in Monterey, California, in 1885. 

352 








































HENRY WHEELER SHAW. 


353 


JOSH BILLING'S ADVERTISEMENT. 

(FROM “ JOSH BILLINGS, HIS WORKS.” 1876.) 


KAN sell fur eighteen hundred and thirty- 
jSw Rgl nine dollars a pallas, a sweet and pensive 
[ KTKgffiifl J retirement, lokated on the virgin banks ov 
the Hudson, kontaining eighty-five acres. The land 
is luxuriously divided by the hand of natur and art 
into pastor and tillage, into plain and deklivity, into 
stern abruptness, and the dallianse ov moss-tufted 
medder; streams ov sparkling gladness (thick with 
trout) danse through this wilderness ov buty tew 
the low musik ov the kricket and grasshopper. The 
evergreen sighs as the evening sepliir flits through its 
shadowy buzzum, and the aspen trembles like the 
luv-smitten harte ov a damsell. Fruits ov the tropicks, 
in golden buty, melt on the bows, and the bees go 
heavy and sweet from the fields to their garnering 
hives. The manshun is ov Parian marble ; the porch 
iz a single diamond, set with rubiz and the mother ov 
pearl; the floors are ov rosewood, and the ceilings are 
more butiful than the starry vault of heaven. Hot 
and cold water bubbles and quirts in evry apartment, 
and nothing is wanting that a poet could pra for, or 

-*o*- 


art could portray. The stables are worthy of the 
steeds ov Nimrod or the studs ov Akilles, and its 
hennery waz bilt expressly for the birds of paradice • 
while sombre in the distance, like the cave ov a 
hermit, glimpses are caught ov the dorg-house. Here 
poets hav cum and warbled their laze—here skulptors 
hav cut, here painters hav robbed the scene ov dreamy 
landscapes, and here the philosopher diskovered the 
stun which made him the alkimist ov natur. Next, 
northward ov this thing ov buty, sleeps the resi¬ 
dence and domain ov the Duke, John Smith, while 
southward, and nearer the spice-breathing tropicks, 
may be seen the barronial villy ov Earl Brown and 
the Duchess, Widder Betsy Stevens. Walls ov 
primitiff rock, laid in Roman cement, bound the 
estate, while upward and downward the eye catches 
the magesta and slow grander ov the Hudson. As 
the young moon hangs like a cutting ov silver from 
the blue brest ov the ski, an angel may be seen each 
night dansing with golden tiptoes on the green. (N. 
B.—This angel goes with the place.) 


MANIFEST 

ANIFESS destiny iz the science ov going 
tew bust, or enny other place before yu git 
thare. I may be rong in this centiment, 
but that iz the w r ay it strikes me ; and i am so put 
together that when enny thing strikes me i imrne- 
jiately strike back. Manifess destiny mite perhaps 
be blocked out agin as the condishun that man and 
things find themselfs in with a ring in their nozes 
and sumboddy hold ov the ring. I may be rong agin, 
but if i am, awl i have got tew sa iz i don’t kno it, 
and what a man don’t kno ain’t no damage tew enny 
buddy else. The tru way that manifess destiny had 
better be sot down iz the exact distance that a frog 
kan jump down hill with a striped snake after him ; i 
don’t kno but i may be rong onst more, but if the 
frog don’t git ketched the destiny iz jist what he iz 
a looking for. 

When a man falls into the bottom ov a well and 
makes up hiz minde tew stay thare, that ain t mani¬ 
fess destiny enny more than having yure hair cut short 
2 3 


DESTINY. 

iz; but if he almost gits out and then falls down in 
agin 16 foot deeper and brakes off hiz neck twice in 
the same plase and dies and iz buried thare at low 
water, that iz manifess destiny on the square. Stand¬ 
ing behind a cow in fly time and gitting kicked twice 
at one time must feel a good deal like manifess 
destiny. Being about 10 seckunds tew late tew git 
an express train, and then chasing the train with yure 
wife, and an umbreller in yure hands, in a hot day, 
and not getting as near tew the train az you waz 
when started, looks a leetle like manifess destiny 
on a rale rode trak. Going into a tempranse house 
and calling for a leetle old Bourbon on ice, and being 
told in a mild way that “ the Bourbon iz jist out, but 
they hav got sum gin that cost 72 cents a gallon in 
Paris,” sounds tew me like the manifess destiny ov 
most tempranse houses. 

Mi dear reader, don’t beleave in manifess destiny 
until yu see it. Thare is such a thing az manifess 
destiny, but when it occurs it iz like the number ov 



















354 


HENRY WHEELER SHAW. 


rings on the rakoon’s tale, ov no great consequense 
onla for ornament. Man wan’t made for a machine, 
if he waz, it was a locomotiff machine, and manifess 
destiny must git oph from the trak when the bell 
rings or git knocked higher than the price ov gold. 
Manifess destiny iz a disseaze, but it iz eazy tew heal; 
i have seen it in its wust stages cured bi sawing a 


cord ov dri hickory wood, i thought i had it onse; 
it broke out in the shape ov poetry; i sent a speci- 
ment ov the disseaze tew a magazine ; the magazine 
man wrote me next day az follers: 

“ Dear Sur: You may be a phule, but you are no 
poeck. Yures, in haste.” 


LETTERS TO FARMERS. 


ELOVED FARMERS : Agrikultur iz the 
mother ov farm produce; she is also the 
step-mother ov gardin sass. 

Rize at half-past 2 o’clock in the morning, bild up 
a big fire in the kitchen, burn out two pounds ov 
handles, and grease yure boots. Wait pashuntly for 
dabrakb. When day duz brake, then commence tew 
stir up the geese and worry the hogs. 

Too mutch sleep iz ruinous tew geese and tew hogs. 
Remember yu kant git rich on a farm, unless yu rize 
at 2 o’clock in the morning, and stir up the hogs and 
worry the geese. 


The happyest man in the world iz the farmer; he 
rizes at 2 o’clock in the morning, he watches for da 
lite tew brake, and when she duz brake, he goes out 
and stirs up the geese and worrys the hogs. 

What iz a lawyer !—What iz a merchant ?—What 
iz a doktor ?—What iz a minister ?—I answer, noth¬ 
ing ! 

A farmer is the nobless work ov God; he rizes at 
2 o’clock in the morning, and burns out a half a 
pound ov wood 'and two kords of kandles, and then 
goes out tew worry the geese and stir up the hogs. 

Beloved farmers, adew. Josh Billings. 













SAMUEL L. CLEMENS. 

(mark twain). 

ARK TWAIN lias a world wide reputation as the great American 
humorist, a reputation which has been steadily growing at home and 
abroad since the publication of “ Innocents Abroad ” in 1869, and 
he is undoubtedly one of the most popular authors in the United 
States. The story of his life is the record of a career which could 
have been possible in no other country in the world. 

He was born in Florida in 1835, though most of his boyhood was passed at 
Hanibal, Mo., where he attended the village school until he was thirteen, which was 
his only opportunity for educational training. At this early age he was apprenticed 
to a printer and worked at this trade in St. Louis, Cincinnatti, Philadelphia and 
New York. During his boyhood his great ambition, his one yearning, had been to 
become one day a pilot on a Mississippi steamboat. He realized this ambition in 
1851 and the experiences of this pilot life are told in his “ Life on the Mississippi.” 
His pen-name was suggested by the expression used in Mississippi navigation where 
in sounding a depth of two fathoms, the leadsman calls out, “Mark Twain!” 

After serving in 1861 in Nevada as private secretary to his brother who was at 
this time secretary of the Territory, he became city editor of the Virginia City 
“ Enterprise,” and here his literary labors began, and the pseudonym now so 
familiar was first used. 

In 1865, he was reporter on the staff of the San Francisco “Morning Call,” 
though his newspaper work was interspersed with unsuccessful attempts at gold 
digging and a six months’ trip to Hawaii. 

This was followed by a lecture trip through California and Nevada, which gave 
unmistakable evidence that he had the “gift” of humor. 

His fame, however, was really made by the publication of “ Innocents Abroad ’ 
(Hartford, 1869), 125,000 copies of which were sold in three years. This book is a 
brilliant, humorous account of the travels, experiences and opinions of a party of 
tourists to the Mediterranean, Egypt, Palestine, France and Italy. 

His next literary work of note was the publication of “ Roughing It ” (Hart¬ 
ford, 1872), which shook the sides of readers all over the United States. This con¬ 
tained inimitable sketches of the rough border life and personal experiences in Cali¬ 
fornia, Nevada and Utah. In fact all Mark Twain’s literary work which bears the 
stamp of permanent worth and merit is personal and autobiographical. He is never 
so successful in works that are purely of an imaginative character. 

355 



























356 


SAMUEL L. CLEMENS. 


In 1873, in conjunction with Charles Dudley Warner, he produced a story 
entitled the “ Gilded Age ” which was dramatized and had a marked success on the 
stage. His other well-known works are : “ Sketches Old and New;” “ Adventures 
of Tom Sawyer ” (1876), a story of boy life in Missouri and one of his best produc¬ 
tions, “ Punch, Brothers, Punch ” (1878); “A Tramp Abroad ” (1880), containing 
some of his most humorous and successful descriptions of personal experiences on a 
trip through Germany and Switzerland; “The Stolen White Elephant” (1882); 
“ Prince and the Pauper ” (1882); “Life on the Mississippi ” (1883) ; “ Adventures 
of Huckleberry Finn” (1885), a sequel to “Tom Sawyer;” “A Yankee at King 
Arthur’s Court” and Personal Becollections of Joan of Arc” (1896). 

In 1884, he established in New York City the publishing house of C. L. 
Webster & Co., which issued in the following year the “ Memoirs ” of U. S. 
Grant, the profits from which publication to the amount of $350,000 were paid 
to Mrs. Grant in accordance with an agreement previously signed with General 
Grant. 


By the unfortunate failure of this company in 1895, Mark Twain found himself 
a poor man and morally, though not legally, responsible for large sums due the 
creditors. Like Sir Walter Scott, he resolved to wipe out the last dollar of the debt 
and at once entered upon a lecturing trip around the world, which effort is proving 
financially a success. He is also at work upon a new book soon to be published. 
His home is at Hartford, Connecticut, where he has lived in delightful friendship 
and intercourse with Charles Dudley Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe and other 
literary characters of that city. His writings have been translated into German and 
they have met with large sales both in England and on the continent. 


JIM SMILEY’S FROG. 


ELL, this yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and 
chicken-cocks, and all them kind of things, 
till you couldn’t rest, and you couldn’t fetch 
nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you. He 
ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said 
he cal'klated to edercate him ; and so he never done 
nothing for three months but set in his back yard and 
learn that frog to jump. And you bet he did learn 
him, too. He’d give him a little punch behind, and 
the next minute you’d see that frog whirling in the 
air like a doughnut,—see him turn one summerset, or 
maybe a couple, if he got a good start, and come down 
flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up 
so in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in 
practice so constant, that he’d nail a fly every time 
as far as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog 
wanted was education, and he could do most any¬ 
thing; and I believe him. Why, I’ve seen him set 
Dan’l Webster down hereon this floor,—Dan’l Web¬ 



ster was the name of the frog,—and sing out, “ Flies, 
Dan’l, flies,” and quicker’n you could wink he'd 
spring straight up, and snake a fly off’n the counter 
there, and flop down on the floor again, as solid as a 
gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head 
with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn’t no idea 
he’d been doing any more'n any frog might do. You 
never see a frog so modest and straightfor’ard as he 
was, for all he was so gifted. And when it came to 
fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get 
over more ground at one straddle than any animal of 
his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was 
his strong suit, you understand ; and when it come to 
that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as 
he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his 
frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had trav¬ 
eled and been everywhere, all said he laid over any 
frog that ever they see. 

Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, 









SAMUEL L. CLEMENS. 


357 


and lie used to fetch liim down town sometimes, and 
lay for a bet. One day a feller,—a stranger in the 
camp he was,—came across him with his box, and 
says: 

“ What might it be that you’ve got in the box?” 

And Smiley says sorter indifferent like, “ It might 
be a parrot, or it might be a canary, may be, but it 
ain’t,—it’s only just a frog.” 

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and 
turned it round this way and that, and says, “ H’m ! 
so ’tis. Well, what’s he good for?” 

“ Well,” Smiley says, easy and careless, “ he’s good 
enough for one thing, I should judge—he can outjump 
any frog in Calaveras County.” 

The feller took the box again, and took another long 
particular look, and gave it back to Smiley, and says, 
very deliberate, “ Well, I don’t see no p’ints about 
that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.” 

“ May be you don’t,” Smiley says. “ May be you 
understand frogs, and may be you don’t understand 
'em; may be you’ve had experience, and may be you 
an t only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got 
my opinion, and I’ll risk forty dollars that he can out- 
jump any frog in Calaveras County. 

And the feller studied a minute, and then says, 
kinder sad like, “ Well, I’m only a stranger here, and 
I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog, I’d bet 

YOU.” 

And then Smiley says, “ That’s all right, that’s all 
right ; if you'll hold my box a minute, I’ll go and get 
you a frog.” And so the feller took the box, and put 
up his forty dollars along with Smiley’s and set down 
to wait. So he set there a good while, thinking and 
thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and 
prized his mouth open, and took a teaspoon and filled 


him full of quail shot,—filled him pretty near up to 
his chin,—and set him on the floor. Smiley he went 
to the swamp, and slopped around in the mud for a 
long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched 
him in, and give him to this feller, and says: 

“ Now, if you’re ready, set him alongside of Dan’l, 
with his fore-paws just even with Dan’l, and I’ll give 
the word.” Then he says, “ One—two—three— 
jump;” and him and the feller touched up the frogs 
from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan’l 
gave a heave and hysted up his shoulders,—so,—like a 
Frenchman, but it wasn’t no use,—he couldn’t budge ; 
he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn’t 
no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was 
a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted, too, but 
he didn’t have no idea what the matter was, of 
course. 

The feller took the money and started away; and 
when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked 
his thumb over his shoulders,—this way,—at Dan’l, 
and says again, very deliberate, “ Well, / don’t see no 
p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other 
frog.” 

Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking 
down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he says, “ I do 
wonder what in the nation that frog throwed off for; 
I wonder if there an’t something the matter with 
him, he ’pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.” 
And he ketched Dan’l by the nap of the neck, and 
lifted him up, and says, “ Why, blame my cats, if he 
don’t weigh five pound ! ” and turned him upside 
down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. 
And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest 
man. He set the frog down, and took out after that 
feller, but he never ketched him. 




UNCLE DAN’L’S APPARITION AND PRAYER. 

(FROM “ THE GILDED AGE ” OF CLEMENS AND WARNER.) 


DEEP coughing sound troubled the stillness, 
way toward a wooded cape that jutted into 
the stream a mile distant. All in an in¬ 
stant a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape 
and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart 
the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and 
louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, 
glared wilder and still wilder. A huge shape de¬ 



veloped itself out of the gloom, and from its tall 
duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and 
spangled with sparks, poured out and went tumbling 
away into the farther darkness. Nearer and nearer 
the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with 
spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river 
and attended the monster like a torchlight procession, 
“ What is it? Oh, what is it, Uncle Dan’l! ” 











358 


SAMUEL L. CLEMENS. 


With deep solemnity the answer came: 

“ It’s de Almighty ! Git down on yo’ knees !” 

It was not necessary to say it twice. They were 
all kneeling in a moment. And then while the mys¬ 
terious coughing rose stronger and stronger and the 
threatening glare reached farther and wider, the 
negro’s voice lifted up its supplications: 

“ 0 Lord, we’s ben mighty wicked, an’ we knows 
dat we 'zerve to go to de bad place, but good Lord, 
deah Lord, we ain’t ready yit, we ain’t ready—let 
these po’ chil’en hab one mo’ chance, jes’ one mo’ 
chance. Take de old niggah if you’s got to hab some¬ 
body. Good Lord, good deah Lord, we don’t know 
whah you’s a gwine to, we don’t know who you’s got 
yo’ eye on, but we knows by de way you’s a comin,’ 
we knows by the way you’s a tiltin’ along in yo’ 
charyot o’ fiah dat some po’ sinner’s a gwine to ketch 
it. But, good Lord, dese chil’en don’ b'long heah, 
dey’s f’m Obedstown whah dey don’t know nuffin, 
an’ yo’ knows, yo’ own sef, dat dey ain’t ’sponsible. 
An’ deah Lord, good Lord, it ain’t like yo’ mercy, 
it ain’t like yo’ pity, it ain’t like yo’ long-sufferin’ 
lovin’-kindness for to take dis kind o’ ’vantage o’ 
sich little chil’en as dese is when dey’s so many onery 
grown folks chuck full o’ cussedness dat wants roastin’ 
down dah. 0 Lord, spah de little chil’en, don’t tar 
de little chil’en away f’m dey frens, jes’ let ’em off dis 
once, and take it out’n de ole niggah. Heah I is, 
Lord, heah I is ! De ole niggah’s ready, Lord, de 
ole-” 

The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast 
the party, and not twenty steps away. The awful 
thunder of a mud-valve suddenly burst forth, drown¬ 
ing the prayer, and as suddenly Uncle Dan’l snatched 
a child under each arm and scoured into the woods 
with the rest of the pack at his heels. And then, 
ashamed of himself, he halted in the deep darkness 
and shouted (but rather feebly) : 

“ Heah I is, Lord, heah I is! ” 

There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and 
then, to the surprise and comfort of the party, it was 
plain that the august presence had gone by, for 
its dreadful noises were receding. Uncle Dan’l 
headed a cautious reconnoissance in the direction 
of the log. Sure enough “ the Lord ” was just 
turning a point a short distance up the river, and 
while they looked the lights winked out and the 


coughing diminished by degrees and presently ceased 
altogether. 

“ H’wsh! Well, now, dey’s some folks says dey 
ain’t no ’ficiency in prah. Dis chile would like to 
know whah we’d a ben now if it warn’t fo’ dat prah! 
Dat's it. Dat’s it! ” 

“ Uncle Dan’l, do you reckon it was the prayer that 
saved us?” said Clay. 

“ Does I reckon ? Don’t I know it! Whah was 
yo’ eyes? Warn’t de Lord jes’ a cornin’ chow! 
chow ! chow ! an’ a goin’ on turrible—an’ do de Lord 
carry on dat way ’dout dey’s sumfin don’t suit him? 
An’ warn’t he a lookin’ right at dis gang heah, an’ 
warn’t he jes’ a reachin’ fer ’em ? An’ d’you spec’ he 
gwine to let ’em off ’dout somebody ast him to do it ? 
No indeedy! ” 

“Do you reckon he saw us, Uncle Dan’l?” 

“ De law sakes, chile, didn't I see him a lookin’ at 
us?” 

“ Did you feel scared, Uncle Dan’l?” 

"No sah ! When a man is ’gaged in prah he ain’t 
’fraid o’ nuffin—dey can’t nuffin tech him.” 

“ Well, what did you run for?” 

“ Well, I—I—Mars Clay, when a man is under de 
influence ob de sperit, he do-no what he’s ’bout— 
no sah; dat man do-no what he’s ’bout. You 
might take an’ tab de head off’n dat man an’ he 
wouldn’t scasely fine it out. Dah’s de Hebrew chil’en 
dat went frough de fiah ; dey was burnt considable— 
ob coase dey was; but dey did’nt know nuffin ’bout 
it —heal right up agin ; if dey’d been gals dey’d missed 
dey long haah (hair), maybe, but dey wouldn’t felt 
de burn.” 

“ I dont know but what they were girls. I think 
they were.” 

“ Now, Mars Clay, you knows better’n dat. Some¬ 
times a body can’t tell whedder you’s a sayin’ 
what you means or whedder you’s a saying what 

you don’t mean, ’case you says ’em bofe de same 
way.” 

“ But how should I know whether they were boys 
or girls ? ” 

“ Goodness sakes, Mars Clay, don’t de good book 
say ? ’Sides don’t it call ’em de He- brew chil’en ? If 
dey was gals wouldn’t dey be de she-brew chil’en ? 
Some people dat kin read don’t ’pear to take no no¬ 
tice when dey do read.” 





SAMUEL L. CLEMENS. 


359 


“ Well, Uncle Dan’l, I think that- My ! here 

comes another one up the river ! There can’t be two .” 

We gone dis time—we done gone dis time sho’! 
Dey ain't two, Mars Clay, dat’s de same one. De Lord 
kin ’pear everywhah in a second. Goodness, how de 
fiah an’ de smoke do belch up ! Dat means business, 
honey. He cornin’ now like he forgot surnfin. Come 


Tong, cliil’en, time you’s gone to roos’. Go Tong wid 
you—ole Uncle DanT gwine out in de woods to rastle 
in prah—de ole niggah gwine to do what he kin to 
sabe you agin ! ” 

He did go to the woods and pray; but he went so 
far that he doubted himself if the Lord heard him 
when he went by. 




THE BABIES. 

From a speech of Mark Twain at the banquet given in honor of Gen. Grant, by the Army of the Ten¬ 
nessee, at the Palmer House, Chicago, Nov. 14, 1879. 


3jJ?g?9jOAST :—“ The Babies—As they comfort us 
Kr? * n our sorrows 5 ^ et us not forget them in 
our festivities.” 

I like that. We haven’t all had the good fortune 
to be ladies; we haven’t all been generals, or poets, 
or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the 
babies, we stand on common ground, for we have all 
been babies. It is a shame that for a thousand years 
the world’s banquets have utterly ignored the baby— 
as if he didn’t amount to anything! If you gentle¬ 
men will stop and think a minute,—if you will go 
back fifty or a hundred years, to your early married 
life, and recontemplate your first baby, you will re¬ 
member that he amounted to a good deal, and even 
something over. You soldiers all know that when 
that little fellow arrived at family head-quarters you 
had to hand in your resignation. He took entire 
command. You became his lackey, his mere body- 
servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was 
not a commander who made allowances for time, dis¬ 
tance, weather, or anything else. You had to execute 
his order whether it was possible or not. And there 
was only one form of marching in his manual of 
tactics, and that was the double-quick. He treated 
you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and 
the bravest of you didn’t dare to say a word. You 
could face the death-storm of Donelson and Vicks¬ 
burg, and give back blow for blow; but when he 
clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and 
twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the 
thunders of war were sounding in your ears, you set 
your faces toward the batteries and advanced with 
steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of 
his war-whoop, you advanced in the other direction— 
and mighty glad of the chance, too. When he called 


for soothing syrup, did you venture to throw out any 
side remarks about certain services unbecoming an 
officer and a gentleman ? No,—you got up and got 
it. If he ordered his bottle, and it wasn’t warm, did 
you talk back? Not you,—you went to work and 
warmed it. You even descended so far in your 
menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid 
stuff yourself, to see if it was right,—three parts 
water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the 
colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal 
hiccups. I can taste that stuff yet. And how many 
things you learned as you went along; sentimental 
young folks still took stock in that beautiful old say¬ 
ing that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is be¬ 
cause the angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, 
but “ too thin,”—simply wind on the stomach, my 
friends! If the baby proposed to take a walk at his 
usual hour, 2:30 in the morning, didn’t you rise up 
promptly and remark—with a mental addition which 
wouldn’t improve a Sunday-school book much—that 
that was the very thing you were about to propose 
yourself! Oh, you were under good discipline ! And 
as you went fluttering up and down the room in your 
“ undress uniform ” you not only prattled undignified 
baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and 
tried to sing “ Rockaby baby in a tree-top,” for in¬ 
stance. What a spectacle for an Army of the Ten¬ 
nessee ! And what an affliction for the neighbors, 
too,—for it isn’t everybody within a mile around that 
likes military music at three in the morning. And 
when you had been keeping this sort of thing up 
two or three hours, and your little velvet-head inti¬ 
mated that nothing suited him like exercise and 
no j sej —“ Go on ! ”—what did you do ? You simply 
went on, till you disappeared in the last ditch. 
















MISS MARIETTA HOLLEY. 



(“josiah allen’s wife.”) 

HE poetic declaration that “genius unbidden rises to the top” is fully 
verified in the now famous “Josiah Allen’s Wife.” Miss Holley 
commenced to write at an early age both verses and sketches, but 
was so timid that she jealously hid them away from every eye until 
she had accumulated quite a collection of manuscript. This most 
famous humorist among women was born in a country place near 
Adams, New York, where she still lives, and where five generations of her ancestors 
have resided. Her first appearance in print was in a newspaper published in 
Adams. The editor of the paper, it is said, praised her article, and she was also 
encouraged by Charles J. Peterson, for whom she wrote later. She wrote also for 
“The Independent” and other journals. Most of her early articles were poems, 
and were widely copied both in America and Eurojie. 

Miss Holley’s first pen-name was “Jemyme.” It was not until she wrote a 
dialectic sketch for “Peterson’s Magazine” that she began to sign her name as 
“Josiah Allen’s Wife.” This sketch brought her into prominence, and Elija Bliss, 
President of The American Publishing Company, of Hartford, Connecticut, it is 
said, against the protests of his company, published “Josiah Allen’s Wife” in book 
form, and encouraged her to write another book, which he issued under the name of 
“My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s” (1872). Since this Miss Holley’s fame has 
steadily increased, and she has issued a book every few years. “Samantha at the 
Centennial” appeared in 1877, describing the experiences of herself and Josiah at 
that great international exhibition. It is extremely humorous and added to her 
already great fame. “My Wayward Pardner” appeared in 1880. In 1882 she 
published “Miss Richards’ Boy,” a book of stories, but not written in dialect. All 
of the above works were issued by her Hartford publisher, as was also her illustrated 
poem entitled “The Mormon Wife.” In 1885 “Sweet Cicely, or Josiah Allen’s Wife 
as a Politician,” appeared in New York. In 1887 her famous book, “Samantha at 
Saratoga,” was issued in Philadelphia, for the manuscript of which she was paid $10,- 
000 in cash, in addition to which sum she also received a considerable amount from 
the “Ladies’ Home Journal” for parts of the work published in serial form in that 
magazine. Nearly a quarter of a million copies of her “Samantha at Saratoga” 
have already been sold. During the same year she issued a book of poems in New 
York, and further popularized her nom-de-plume by “Samantha Among the 
Brethren” in 1891. In 1893 “Samantha on the Race Problem” created con- 


360 
































MISS MARIETTA HOLLEY. 


361 


siderable amusement by the mixture of grotesque humor and philosophy on this 
much discussed and serious problem, the illustrations in the work adding no small 
quota to its popularity. In 1894 appeared “Samantha at the World’s Fair” in 
which the experiences of herself and her partner, Josiali, are even more amusing 
than those at the Centennial in 1876. 

Through all of Miss Holley’s works there runs a vein of homely philosophy and 
practical common sense. It is in a most delightfully good-humored manner that 
she takes off the foibles and follies of “racin’ after fashion.” Her humor is 
remarkably wholesome, and while it is not remiss in laughter-provoking quality, 
is always clear, and above all things pure. Her books have been widely circu¬ 
lated both in America and in Europe, and some of them have been translated 
into other languages. 


JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE CALLS ON THE PRESIDENT* 

Josiah Allen has a violent attack of political fever and liis wife being greatly exercised over it finally 
concludes to visit Washington, and take the advice of the President on the disturbing question. This inter¬ 
view with the President is a fair example of the author’s style. 


ND so we wended our way down the broad, 
beautiful streets towards the White House. 
Handsomer streets I never see. I had 
thought Jonesville streets wus middlin’ handsome and 
roomy. Why, two double wagons can go by each 
other w r ith perfect safety, right in front of the 
grocery-stores, where there is lots of boxes too; and 
wiminen can be a-walkin’ there too at the same time, 
hefty ones. 

But, good land ! loads of hay could pass each other 
here, and droves of dromedaries, and camels, and not 
touch each other, and then there would be lots of 
room for men and wiminen, and for wagons to rumble, 
and perioguers to float up and down—if perioguers 
could sail on dry land. 

Roomier, handsomer, well-shadeder streets I never 
want to see, nor don’t expect to. W hy Jonesville 
streets are like tape compared with ’em; and Loon- 
town and Toad Holler, they are like thread, No. 50 
(allegory). 

Bub Smith wus well acquainted with the Presi¬ 
dent’s hired man, so he let us in without parlay. 

I don’t believe in talkin’ big as a general thing. 
But think’es I, Here I be, a-holdin’ up the dignity of 
Jonesville: and here I be, on a deep, heart-searchin’ 
errent to the Nation. So I said, in words and axents 
a good deal like them I have read of in “ Children 
of the Abbey” and “ Charlotte Temple,”— 



“ Is the President of the United States within?” 

He said he was, but said sunthin’ about his not re¬ 
ceiving calls in the mornings. 

But I says in a very polite way,—for I like to put 
folks at their ease, presidents or peddlers or any¬ 
thing,— 

“ It hain’t no matter at all if he hain’t dressed up ; 
of course he wuzn’t expectin’ company. Josiah don’t 
dress up mornin’s.” 

And then he says something about “ he didn’t know 
but he was engaged.” 

Says I, “ That hain’t no news to me, nor the 
Nation. We have been a-hearin’ that for three years, 
right along. And if he is engaged, it hain’t no good 
reason why he shouldn’t speak to other wimiuen, 
—good, honorable married ones too.” 

“ Well,” says he, finally, “ I will take up your 
card.” 

“ No, you won’t!” says I, firmly. “lama Metho¬ 
dist ! I guess I can start off on a short tower without 
takin’ a pack of cards with me. And if I had ’em 
right here in my pocket, or a set of dominoes, I 
shouldn’t expect to take up the time of the President 
of the United States a-playin’ games at this time of 
the day.” Says I, in deep tones, “ I am a-carrien’ er- 
rents to the President that the world knows not of.” 

He blushed up red ; he was ashamed ; and he said 
“ he would see if I could be admitted.” 


From “ Sweet Cicely.” Permission of Funk & Wagnalls. 









362 


MISS MARIETTA HOLLEY. 


vL» vl/ 

'T* 'T* ^ / [ s 

I was jest a-thinkin' this when the hired man came 
back, and said,— 

“ The President would receive me.” 

“ Wall,” says I, calmly, “ I am ready to be re¬ 
ceived.” 

So I follered him; and he led the way into a 
beautiful room, kinder round, and red-colored, with 

lots of elegant pictures and lookin’-glasses and books. 
* * * 

He then shook hands with me, and I with him. I, 
too, am a perfect lady. And then he drawed up a 
chair for me with his own hands (hands that grip 
holt of the same helium that Gr. W. had gripped 
holt of. 0 soul! be calm when I think on’t), and 
asked me to set down ; and consequently I sot. 

I leaned my umberell in a easy, careless position 
against a adjacent chair, adjusted my long green veil 
in long, graceful folds,—I hain’t vain, but I like to 
look well,—and then I at once told him of my errents. 
I told him— 

“ I had brought three errents to him from 
Jonesville,—one for myself, and two for Dorlesky 
Burpy.” 

He bowed, but didn’t say nothin’: he looked tired. 
Josiah always looks tired in the mornin’ when he has 
got his milkin’ and barn-chores done, so it didn’t sur¬ 
prise me. And havin’ calculated to tackle him on 
my own errent first, consequently I tackled him. 

I told him how deep my love and devotion to my 
pardner wuz. 

And he said “ he had heard of it.” 

And I says, “ I s’pose so. I s’pose such things 
will spread, bein’ a sort of a rarity. I’d heard that it 
had got out, ’way beyend Loontown, and all round.” 

“ Yes,” he said, “ it was spoke of a good deal.” 

“ Wall,” says I, “ the cast-iron love and devotion I 
feel for that man don’t show off the brightest in 
hours of joy and peace. It towers up strongest in 
dangers and troubles.” And then I went on to tell 
him how Josiah wanted to come there as a senator, 
and what a dangerous place I had alwaj^s heard 
Washington wuz, and how I had felt it was impossi¬ 
ble for me to lay down on my goose-feather pillow at 
home, in peace and safety, while my pardner was a- 


grapplin’ with dangers of which I did not know the 
exact size and heft. Then, says I, solemnly, “ I ask 
you, not as a politician, but as a human bein , would 
you dast to let Josiah come?” 

The President didn’t act surprised a mite. And 
finally he told me, what I had always mistrusted, but 
never knew, that Josiah had wrote to him all his poli¬ 
tical views and aspirations, and offered his help to the 
government. And says he, “ I think I know all 
about the man.” 

“ Then,” says I, “ you see he is a good deal like 
other men.” 

And he said, sort o’ dreamily, “ that he was.” 

And then again silence rained. He was a-thinkin’, 
I knew, on all the deep dangers that hedged in 
Josiah Allen and America if he come. And a-musin’ 
on all the probable dangers of the Plan. And a- 
thinkin’ it over how to do jest right in the matter,— 
right by Josiah, right by the nation, right by me. 

Finally the suspense of the moment wore onto me 
too deep to bear, and I says, in almost harrowin’ tones 
of anxiety and suspense.— 

“ Would it be safe for my pardner to come to 
Washington? Would it be safe for Josiah, safe 
for the nation?” Says I, in deeper, mournfuller 
tones,— 

“ Would you—would you dast to let him come ?” 

Pity and good feelin’ then seemed to overpower for 
a moment the statesman and courteous diplomat. 

And he said, in gentle, gracious tones, “ If I tell 
you just what I think, I would not like to say it offi¬ 
cially, but would say it in confidence, as from an 
Allen to an Allen.” 

“ Says I, “ It shan’t go no further.” 

And so I would warn everybody that it must not 
be told. 

Then says he, “ I will tell you. I wouldn’t dast.” 

Says I, “ That settles it. If human efforts can 
avail, Josiah Allen will not be United States Sena¬ 
tor.” And says I, “ You have only confirmed my 
fears. I knew, feelin’ as he felt, that it wuzn’t safe 
for Josiah or the nation to have him come.” 

Agin he reminded me that it was told to me in 
confidence, and agin I want to say that it must be 
kep’. 







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CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS. 


AUTHOR OF “LEEDLE YAWCOB STRAUSS.” 



HE humorous and dialectic literature of America owes more to Charles 
Follen Adams perhaps than to any other contributor who has not 
made literature a business or depended upon his pen for his livelihood. 
There is not a pretentious book of humorous readings or popular 
selections of late years which has not enriched its pages from this 
pleasingly funny man who delineates the German-American 
character and imitates its dialect with an art that is so true to nature as to be 
well-nigh perfection. “The Puzzled Dutchman;” “Mine Vamily;” “Mine Moder- 
in-Law;” “Der Yater Mill;” “Der Drummer,” and, above all, “Dot Leedle Yawcob 
Strauss,” have become classics of their kind and will not soon suffer their author to 
be forgotten. 


Charles Follen Adams was born in Dorchester, Mass., April 21, 1842, where he 
received a common school education, leaving school at fifteen years of age to take a 
position in a business house in Boston. This place he occupied until August, 1862, 
when he enlisted, at the age of twenty, in the Thirteenth Massachusetts Regiment of 
Volunteers, and saw service in a number of hard-fought battles. At Gettysburg, 
in 1863, he was wounded and held a prisoner for three days until the Union forces 
recaptured the town. After the close of the war he resumed business, and succeeded 
in placing himself at the head of a large business house in Boston, where he has 
continued to reside. 

It was not until 1870 that Mr. Adams wrote his first poem, and it was two years 
later that his first dialectic effort, “The Puzzled Dutchman,” appeared and made 
his name known. From that time he begun to contribute “as the spirit moved him” 
to the local papers, “Oliver Optic’s Magazine,” and, now and then, to “Scribner’s.” 
In 1876 he became a regular contributor to the “Detroit Free Press,” his “Leedle 
Yawcob Strauss” being published in that paper in June, 1876. For many years 
all his productions were published in that journal, and did much to enhance its 
growing popularity as a humorous paper. 

As a genial, companionable man in business and social circles, Mr. Adams has 
as great distinction among his friends as he holds in the literary world as a humorist. 
His house is one of marked hospitality where the fortunate guest always finds a 
cordial welcome. 


363 












































3G4 


CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS. 


DER DRUMMER * 


HO puts oup at der pest hotel, 

Und dakes his oysders on der schell, 
Und mit der frauleins cuts a schwell ? 
Der drummer. 

Who vas it gomes indo mine schtore, 

Drows down his pundles on der vloor, 

Und nefer schtops to shut der door? 

Der drummer. 

Who dakes me py der handt, und say, 

“ Hans Pfeiffer, how you vas to-day?” 

Und goes vor peeseness righdt avay? 

Der drummer. 

Who shpreads his zamples in a trice, 

Und dells me, “ Look, und see how nice?” 
Und says I get “ der bottom price?” 

Der drummer. 

Who dells how sheap der goods vas bought, 
Mooch less as vot I gould imbort, 


But lets dem go as he vas “ short ?” 

Der drummer. 

Who says der tings vas eggstra vine,— 

“ Vrom Sharmany, ubon der Rhine,”— 
Und sheats me den dimes oudt off nine? 
Der drummer. 

Who varrants all der goots to suit 
Der gustomers ubon his route , 

Und ven dey gomes dey vas no goot? 

Der drummer. 

Who gomes aroundt ven I been oudt, 
Drinks oup mine bier, and eats mine kraut, 
Und kiss Katrina in der mout’ ? 

Der drummer. 

Who, ven he gomes again dis vay, 

Will hear vot Pfeiffer has to say, 

Und mit a plack eye goes avay? 

Der drummer. 



<>•- 


HANS AND FRITZ* 


ANS and Fritz were two Deutschers who 
lived side by side, 

Remote from the world, its deceit and its 
pride: 

With their pretzels and beer the spare moments were 
spent, 

And the fruits of their labor were peace and content. 



When the question arose, the note being made, 
“ Vicli von holds dot baper until it vas baid ?” 


“ You geeps dot,” says Fritz, “und den you vill know 
You owes me dot money.” Says Hans, “ Dot ish so : 
Dot makes me remempers I half dot to bay, 

Und I prings you der note und der money some day.” 


Hans purchased a horse of a neighbor one day, 
And, lacking a part of the Geld ,—as they say,— 
Made a call upon Fritz to solicit a loan 
To help him to pay for his beautiful roan. 

Fritz kindly consented the money to lend, 

And gave the required amount to his friend; 
Remarking,—his own simple language to quote,— 
“ Berhaps it vas bedder ve make us a note.” 

The note was drawn up in their primitive way,— 

“ I, Hans, gets from Fritz feefty tollars to-day;” 


A month had expired, when Hans, as agreed. 

Paid back the amount, and from debt he was freed. 
Says Fritz, “Now dot settles us.” Hans replies, 
“ Yaw: 

Now who dakes dot baper accordings by law ? ” 

“ I geeps dot now, aind’t it?” says Fritz; “ den you 
see, 

I alvays remempers you paid dot to me.” 

Says Hans, “ Dot ish so: it vas now shust so blain, 
Dot I knows vot to do ven I porrows again.” 


YAWCOB STRAUSS* 



ITAF von funny leedle poy, 

1C gpj 

Vot gomes schust to mine knee; 

SSLS* 

Der queerest schap, der Greatest rogue, 


As efer you dit see, 


He runs, und schumps, und schmashes dings 
In all harts off der house: 

But vot off dot ? he vas mine son, 

Mine leedle Yawcob Strauss. 


* Special Permission of the Author. 


























CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS. 


365 


He get der measles und der mumbs, 

Und eferyding dot’s oudt; 

He sbills mine glass off lager bier, 

Poots schnuff indo mine kraut. 

He fills mine pipe mit Limburg cheese.— 
Dot vas der roughest chouse : 

Yd dake dot vrom no oder poy 
But leedle Yawcob Strauss. 

He dakes der milk-ban for a dhrum, 

Und cuts mine cane in dwo, 

To make der schticks to beat it mit.— 
Mine cracious dot vas drue ! 

I dinks mine bed vas schplit abart, 

He kicks oup sooch a touse: 

But nefer mind ; der poys vas few 
Like dot young Yawcob Strauss. 


He asks me questions sooch as dese : 

Who baints mine nose so red ? 

Who vas it cut dot schmoodth blace oudt 
Vrom der hair ubon mine hed ? 

Und vhere der plaze goes vrom der lamp 
Yene er der glim I douse. 

How gan I all dose dings eggsblain 
To dot schmall Yawcob Strauss? 

I somedimes dink I sc-hall go vild 
Mit sooch a grazy poy, 

Und vish vonce more I gould haf rest, 
Und beaceful dimes enshoy ; 

But ven he vas ashleep in ped, 

So guiet as a mouse, 

I prays der Lord, “ Dake anyding, 

But leaf dot Yawcob Strauss.” 




MINE MODER-IN-LAW* 



HERE vas many qveer dings in dis land of 
der free, 

I neffer could qvite understand ; 

Der beoples dhey all seem so deefrent to me 
As dhose in mine own faderland. 

Dhey gets blendy droubles, und indo mishaps 
Mitout der least bit off a cause ; 

Und vould you pelief it? dhose mean Yangee shaps 
Dhey fights mit dheir moder-in-laws ? 


Id vas von off dhose voman’s righdts vellers I been 
Dhere vas noding dot’s mean aboudt me; 

A lien der oldt lady vishes to run dot masheen, 

A hy, I shust let her run id, you see. 

Und vlien dot shly A'awcob vas cutting some dricks 
(A block off der oldt chip he vas, yaw !) 

Ef he goes for dot shap like some dousand off 
bricks, 

Dot’s all righdt! She’s mine moder-in-law. 


Shust dink off a vhite man so vicked as dot! 

Vhy not gife der oldt lady a show ? 

AA T ho vas it gets oup, ven der nighdt id vas hot, 
Mit mine baby, I shust like to know ? 

Und dhen in dher vinter vhen Katrine vas sick 
Und der mornings vas shnowy und raw, 

Who made righdt avay oup dot fire so quick ? 
A T hy, dot vas mine moder-in-law. 


A r eek oudt und veek in, id vas always der same, 
Dot vomen vas boss off der house ; 

But, dehn, neffer mindt! I vas glad dot she came 
She vas kind to mine young Yawcob Strauss. 
Und ven dhere vas vater to get vrom der spring 
Und firevood to shplit oup und saw 
She vas velcome to do it. Dhere’s not anyding 
Dot’s too good for mine moder-in-law. 


«o» 


YAWCOB’S DRIBULATIONS. f 


(SEQUEL TO “ LEEDLE YAWCOB STRAUSS.”) 


AYBE dot you don’d rememper, 

Eighdeen—dwendy years ago, 

How I dold aboudt mine A T awcob— 

Dot young rashkell, don’t you know, 
Who got schicken-box und measles; 
Filled mine bipe mit Limburg sheeze; 
Cut mine cane oup indo dhrum-schticks, 
Und blay all sooch dricks as dhese. 

A f ell! dhose times dhey vas been ofer, 

Und dot son off mine, py shings ! 

Now vas taller as hees fader, 

Und vas oup to all sooch dhings 



Like shimnasdic dricks und pase pall; 
Und der oder day he say 
Dot he boxes mit “ adthledics,” 
Somevheres ofer on Back Bay. 

Times vas deeferent, now, I dold you, 
As vhen he vas been a lad ; 

Dhen Katrine she make hees drowsers 
A r rom der oldt vones off hees dad; 
Dhey vas cut so full und baggy, 

Dot id dook more as a fool 
To find oudt eef he vas going, 

Or vas coming home vrom school. 


* Copyright, Harper & Bros, f Copyright, Leo & Shepard 





















366 


CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS. 


Now, dhere vas no making ofer 
Off mine clothes to make a suit 
For dot poy—der times vas schanged ; 

“ Der leg vas on der oder boot; ” 

For vhen hees drowsers dhey gets dhin, 
Und sort off “schlazy” roundt der knee, 
Dot Mrs. Strauss she dake der sceessors 
Und she cuts dhem down for me. 

Shust der oder day dot Yawcob 
Gife me von electric shock, 

Yhen he say he vants fife-hundord 
To invesht in railroadt schtock. 

Dhen I dell him id vas beddher 
Dot he leaf der sclitocks alone, 

Or some fellar dot vas schmardter 
Dake der meat und leaf der bone. 

Und vhen I vas got oxcited, 

Und say he get “ schwiped ” und fooled, 
Dhen he say he haf a “ pointer ” 

Vrorn soom frendts off Sage und Gould; 


Und dot he vas on “ rock bottom ; ” 

Had der “ inside drack ” on “ Atch—” 
Dot vas too mooch for hees fader, 

Und I coom oup to der scratch. 

Dhen in bolitics he dabbles, 

Und all qvesdions, great und schmall, 
Make no deeferent to dot Yawcob — 

For dot poy he knows id all. 

Und he say dot dliose oldt fogies 
Must be laid oup on der shelf, 

Und der governors und mayors 
Should pe young men—like himself. 

Veil! I vish I vas dransborted 
To dliose days of long ago, 

Vhen dot schafer beat der milk-ban, 

Und schkydoodled droo der schnow. 

I could schtand der mumbs und measles, 
Und der ruckshuns in der house ; 

Budt mine presendt dribulations 
Vas too mooch for Meester Strauss. 


-*<>♦- 


THE PUZZLED DUTCHMAN* 


The copy for this selection was forwarded to us by the author himself with the notation on the side, 

“My First Dialect Poem.” 



M a broken-hearted Deutscher, 

Vots villed mit crief unt shame. 
I dells you vot der drouble ish— 

I does n’t know my name. 


Von of der poys was Yawcob 
Und Hans der Oder’s name; 
But den it made no different— 
Ve both got called der same. 


You dinks it ferry vunny, eh ? 

Ven you der story hear, 

You vill not wonder den so mooch 
It vas so shtrange und queer. 


Veil, von of us got tead— 

Yaw, Mynheer, dat is so; 

But vedder Hans or Yawcob, 
Mein mudder she don’t know. 


Mein mudder had dwo liddle dwins— 
Dey vas me und mein brudder; 

Ve lookt so very mooch alike 
No von knew vich from toder. 


Und so I am in droubles; 

I gan’t git droo mein bed 
Vedder I’m Hans vot’s living, 
Or Yawcob vot is tead. 


-*<>♦- 



DER OAK AND DER VINE.f 


DON’D vas preaching voman’s righdts, 
Or anyding like dot, 

Und I likes to see all beoples 
Shust gondented mit dheir lot; 
Budt I vants to gondradict dot shap 
Dot made dis leedle shoke ; 

“A voman vas der glinging vine, 
Und man, der shturdy oak.” 


Berhaps, somedimes, dot may be drue; 

Budt, den dimes oudt off nine, 

I find me oudt dot man himself 
Vas peen der glinging vine ; 

Und ven hees friendts dhey all vas gone, 
Und he vas shust “ tead' proke,” 

Dot’s vhen der voman sliteps righdt in, 
Und peen der shturdy oak. 


* Copyright, Lee & Shepard. 

I From “ Dialect Ballads.” Copyright, 1887, by Harper & Brothers. 

















CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS. 


367 


Shust go oup to der paseball groundts 
Und see dliose “ shturdy oaks ” 

All planted roundt ubon der seats— 

Shust hear dlieir laughs and shokes ! 

Dhen see dhose vomens at der tubs, 

Mit glothes oudt on der lines; 

Yhich vas der shturdy oaks, mine friendts, 
Und vhicli der glinging vines? 

Yen sickness in der householdt comes, 

Und veeks und veeks he shtays, 

Who vas id fighdts him mitoudt resdt, 
Dhose veary nighdts und days ? 

Who beace und gomfort alvays prings, 

Und cools dot fefered prow ? 

More like id vas der tender vine 
Dot oak he glings to, now. 


“ Man vants budt leedle here below,” 

Der boet von time said ; 

Dhere’s leedle dot man he don’d vant, 

I dink id means, inshted ; 

Und ven der years keep rolling on, 

Dheir cares und droubles pringing, 

He vants to pe der shturdy oak, 

Und, also, do der glinging. 

Maype, vhen oaks dhey gling some more, 
Und don’d so shturdy peen, 

Der glinging vines dhey haf some shance 
To helb run life’s masheen. 

In helt und sickness, shoy und pain, 

In calm or shtormy veddher, 

’Twas beddher dot dhose oaks und vines 
Should alvays gling togeddher. 







EDGAR WILSON NYE. 


(BILL NYE.) 



MONG those who have shaken the sides of the fun-loving citizens of 
the United States and many in the old world with genuine wit and 
droll humor, our familiar and purely American “Bill Nye” must be 
numbered. 

Edgar Wilson Nye was a born “funny man” whose humor was 
as irrepressible as his disposition to breathe air. The very face of 
the man, while far from being homely, as is frequently judged from comic pictures 
of him, was enough to provoke the risibility of the most sedate and unsmiling citi¬ 
zens in any community. When Mr. Nye walked out on the platform to exhibit in 
his plain manner a few samples of his “Baled Hay,” or offer what he was pleased 
to term a few “Remarks,” or to narrate one or more of the tales told by those famous 
creatures of his imagination known as “The Forty Liars,”—before a word was 
uttered an infectious smile often grew into a roaring laugh. 


Edgar Wilson Nye was born at Shirley, Maine, 1850. His parents removed to 
Wisconsin, and thence to Wyoming Territory when he was but a boy, and he grew 
up amid the hardships and humorous aspects of frontier life, which he has so amus¬ 
ingly woven into the warp and the woof of his early “yarns.” Mr. Nye studied 
law and was admitted to the bar in 1876; but practiced his profession only one year. 
Afterwards he reported for the newspapers, and, in 1878, began to write regularly 
a weekly humorous letter for the Sunday papers in the West. This he continued 
to do for several years, receiving good compensation therefor, and his reputation as 
a humorous writer grew steadily and rapidly. 

In 1884, Mr. Nye came to New York and organized the Nye Trust, or Syndi¬ 
cate, through which a weekly letter from him should simultaneously appear in the 
journals of the principal cities of the Union. This increased his fame; and during 
the later years of his life he was engaged much of his time on the lecture platform, 
sometimes alone, and sometimes in company with other prominent authors. He 
and the poet, James Whitcomb Riley, did considerable touring together and were 
enthusiastically welcomed wherever they went, the people invariably turning out in 
large numbers to enjoy a feast of fun and good feeling which this pair of prominent 
and typical Westerners never failed to treat them to. 

Among the most humorous of Mr. Nye’s recent writings were his famous letters 
from Buck’s Shoals, North Carolina, where, in his imagination, he established him¬ 
self as a southern farmer, and dealt out his rural philosophy and comments on cur- 


368 





































EDGAR WILSON NYE. 


369 


rent events to the delight, not only of the farmers—many of whom imagined that 
he was really one of them—but of every class of readers throughout the country. 

In 1894 Mr. Nye turned his attention to another branch of humor, and brought 
out till Is yes History of the United States.” The drollery and humor of this 
work is unsurpassed—the interest and delight of the reader being greatly enhanced 
by the fact that he followed the chronological thread of the real historic narrative 
on which he pours the sidelights of his side-splitting humor. The success of this 
book was so great that Mr. Nye was preparing to go abroad to write humorous 
histories of England and other European countries when he suddenly died in 1896, 
in the 47th year of his age. 

After his death Mrs. Nye went abroad, stopping in Berlin for the education of her 
children. The royalty on “Bill Nye’s” books brings an ample support for his 
family. 


-*o« 


THE WILD COW. 


(clipping from 

\ 

HEN I was young and used to roam around 
over the country, gathering water-melons 
in the light of the moon, I used to think 
I could milk anybody’s cow, but I do not think so 
now. I do not milk a cow now unless the sign is 
right, and it hasn’t been right for a good many years. 
The last cow I tried to milk was a common cow, 
born in obscurity; kind of a self-made cow. I 
remember her brow was low, but she wore her tail 
high and she was haughty, oh, so haughty. 

I made a common-place remark to her, one that is 
used in the very best of society, one that need not 
have given offence anywhere. I said, “So”—and 
she “ soed.” Then I told her to “ hist ’’ and she 
histed. But I thought she overdid it. She put too 
much expression in it. 



NEWSPAPER.) 

Just then I heard something crash through the 
window of the barn and fall with a dull, sickening 
thud on the outside. The neighbors came to see 
what it was that caused the noise. They found 
that I had done it in getting through the window. 

I asked the neighbors if the barn was still stand¬ 
ing. They said it was. Then I asked if the cow was 
injured much. They said she seemed to be quite 
robust. Then I requested them to go in and calm 
the cow a little, and see if they could get my plug 
hat off her horns. 

I am buying all my milk now of a milkman. I 
select a gentle milkman who will not kick, and feel 
as though I could trust him. Then, if he feels as 
though he could trust me, it is all right. 


MR. WHISK’S TRUE LOVE. 


0 she said to him : “ Oh, darling, I fear 

that my wealth hath taught thee to love 
me, and if it were to take wings unto 
itself thou wouldst also do the same.” 

“ Nay, Gwendolin,” said Mr. Whisk, softly, as he 
drew her head down upon his shoulder and tickled 
the lobe of her little cunning ear with the end of his 
moustache, “ I love not thy dollars, but thee alone. 
Also elsewhere. If thou doubtest me, give thy 
wealth to the poor. Give it to the World’s Fair. 
Give it to the Central Pacific Railroad. Give it to 

any one who is suffering.” 

24 



“ No,” she unto him straightway did make answer, 
“ I could not do that, honey.” 

“ Then give it to your daughter,” said Mr. Whisk, 
“ if you think I am so low as to love alone your yellow 
dross.” He then drew himself up to his full height. 

She flew to his arms like a frightened dove that 
has been hit on the head with a rock. Folding her 
warm round arms about his neck, she sobbed with 
joy and gave her entire fortune to her daughter. 

Mr. Whisk then married the daughter, and went 
on about his business. I sometimes think that, at the 
best, man is a great coarse thing. 













370 


EDGAR WILSON NYE. 


THE DISCOVERY OF NEW YORK. 

FROM “ BILL NYE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1894.” 

By Permission of J. B. Lippincott Co. 

sold for twenty-four dollars? Were they having 
their portraits painted by Landseer, or their disposi¬ 
tion taken by Jeffreys, or having their Little Lord 
Fauntleroy clothes made ? 

Do not encourage them to believe that they will 
escape me in future years. Some of them died un¬ 
regenerate, and are now, I am told, in a country 
where they may possibly be damned; and I will at- 
of them. Where were they when New York was tend to the others personally. 



HE author will now refer to the discovery of 
the Hudson River and the town of New 
York via Fort Lee and the 125th Street 

Ferry. 

New York was afterwards sold for twenty-four dol¬ 
lars,—the whole island. When I think of this I go 
into my family gallery, which I also use as a swear 
room, and tell those ancestors of mine what I think 



Twenty-four dollars for New York ! Why, my 
Croton-water tax on one house and lot with fifty 
feet four and one-fourth inches front is fifty-nine dol¬ 
lars and no questions asked. Why, you can’t get a 
voter for that now. 

Henry—or Hendrik—Hudson was an English 
navigator, of whose birth and early history nothing 
is known definitely, hence his name is never men¬ 
tioned in many of the best homes of New York. 

In 1607 he made a voyage in search of the 
North West Passage. In one of his voyages he dis¬ 
covered Cape Cod, and later on the Hudson River. 

This was one hundred and seventeen years after 
Columbus discovered America ; which shows that the 
discovering business was not pushed as it should have 
been by those who had it in charge. 

Hudson went up the river as far as Albany, but, 


finding no one there whom he knew, he hastened 
back as far as 209th Street West, and anchored. 

He discovered Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait, 
and made other journeys by water, though aquatting 
was then in its infancy. Afterwards his sailors 
became mutinous, and set Hendrik and his son, with 
seven infirm sailors, afloat. 

Ah ! Whom have we here ? 

It is Hendrik Hudson, who discovered the Hud¬ 
son River. 

Here he has just landed at the foot of 209th 
Street, New York, where he offered the Indians 
liquor, but they refused. 

How 209th. Street has changed ! 

O 

The artist has been fortunate in getting the expres¬ 
sion of the Indians in the act of refusing. Mr. Hud¬ 
son’s great reputation lies in the fact that he dis- 























EDGAR WILSON NYE. 


371 


covered the river which bears his name; but the 
thinking mind will at once regard the discovery of an 
Indian who does not drink as far more wonderful. 

fcome historians say that this special delegation 
was swept away afterwards by a pestilence, whilst 
others, commenting on the incident, maintain that 
Hudson lied. 

It is the only historical question regarding America 
not fully settled by this book. 

Nothing more was heard by him till he turned up 
in a thinking part in “ Rip Van Winkle.” 

Many claims regarding the discovery of various 
parts of the United States had been previously made. 
The Cabots had discovered Labrador; the Spaniards 
the southern part of the United States; the Norse¬ 
men had discovered Minneapolis ; and Columbus had 
discovered San Salvador and had gone home to meet 
a ninety-day note due in Palos for the use of the 
Uinta, which he had hired by the hour. 

But we are speaking of the discovery of New 
York. 

About this time a solitary horseman might have 
been seen at West 209th Street, clothed in a little 
brief authority, and looking out to the west as he 
petulantly spoke in the Tammany dialect, then in the 
language of the blank-verse Indian. He began : 
“ Another day of anxiety has passed, and yet we 
have not been discovered ! The Great Spirit tells me 
in the thunder of the surf and the roaring cataract of 
the Harlem that within a week we will be discovered 
for the first time.” 

As he stands there aboard of his horse one sees 
that he is a chief in every respect, and in life’s great 
drama would naturally occupy the middle of the 
stage. It was at this moment that Hudson slipped 
down the river from Albany past Fort Lee, and, 
dropping a nickle in the slot at 125th Street, weighed 


his anchor at that place. As soon as he had landed 
and discovered the city, he was approached by the 
chief, who said : u We gates. I am on the com¬ 
mittee to show you our little town. I suppose you 
have a power of attorney, of course, for discovering 
us ? ” 

“ les,” said Hudson. u As Columbus used to say 
when he discovered San Salvador, ‘ I do it by the 
right vested in me by my sovereigns.’ ‘ That over¬ 
sizes my pile by a sovereign and a half,’ says one of 
the natives ; and so, if you have not heard it, there 
is a good thing for one of your dinner-speeches 
here.” 

“ Very good,” said the chief, as they jogged down¬ 
town on a swift Sixth Avenue elevated train towards 
the wigwams on 14th Street, and going at the rate of 
four miles an hour. “ We do not care especially who 
discovers us so long as we hold control of the city 
organization. How about that, Hank ? ” 

“ That will be satisfactory,” said Mr. Hudson, 
taking a package of imported cheese and eating it, so 
that they could have the car to themselves. 

“ We will take the departments, such as Police, 
Street-cleaning, etc., etc., etc., while you and Columbus 
get your pictures on the currency and have your 
graves mussed up on anniversaries. We get the two- 
moment horses and the country chateaux on the 
Bronx. Sabe?” 

“ That is, you do not care whose portrait is on the 
currency,” said Hudson. “ so you get the currency.” 

Said the man, “That is the sense of the meeting.” 

Thus was New York discovered via Albany and 
Fort Lee, and five minutes after the two touched 
glasses, the brim of the schoppin and the Manhattan 
cocktail tinkled together, and New York was in¬ 
augurated. 



»»»♦»»»♦»»«■♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ 






mmmmi 


* 

* 

* 


JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 

(“ UNCLE REMUS.”) 

EL CHANDLER HARRIS lias called himself “an accidental 
author,” for while living on a plantation as a typesetter on a country 
newspaper he became familiar with the curious myths and animal 
stories of the negroes, and some time in the seventies he printed a 
magazine article on these folk-lore stories, giving at the same time 
some of the stories as illustration. 

This article attracted attention and revealed to the writer the fact that the stories 
had a decided literary value, and his main literary work has been the elaboration of 
these myths. 

The stories of “ Uncle Remus ” are, as almost everyone knows, not creations of 
the author’s fancy, but they are genuine folk-lore tales of the negroes, and strangely 
enough many of these stories are found in varying forms among the American 
Indians, among the Indians along the Amazon and in Brazil, and they are even 
found in India and Siam, which fact has called out learned discussions of the origin 
and antiquity of the stories and the possible connection of the races. 

Our author was born in Eatonton, a little village in Georgia, December 9, 1848, 
in very humble circumstances. He was remarkably impressed, while still very 
young, with the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and he straightway began to compose little 
tales of his own. 

In 1862 he went to the office of the “ Countryman,” a rural weekly paper in 
Georgia, to learn typesetting. It was edited and published on a large plantation, 
and the negroes of this and the adjoining plantations furnished him with the material 
out of which the “ Uncle Remus ” stories came. 

While learning to set type the young apprentice occasionally tried his hand at 
composing, and not infrequently he slipped into the “ Countryman ” a little article, 
composed and printed, without ever having been put in manuscript form. 

The publication of an article on the folk-lore of the negroes in “ Lippincott’s 
Magazine ” was the beginning of his literary career, and the interest this awakened 
stimulated him to develop these curious animal stories. 

Many of the stories were first printed as articles in the Atlanta “Constitution,” 
and it was soon seen by students of myth-literature that these stories were very sig¬ 
nificant and important in their bearing on general mythology. 

For the child they have a charm and an interest as “ good stories,” and they are 
told with rare skill and power, but for the student of ethnology they have special 

372 






























JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 


0/70 

o7o 


value as throwing some light on the probable relation of the negroes with other races 
which tell similar folk-tales. 

Mi. Harris has studied and pursued the profession of law, though he has now for 
man y y eais been one of the editors of the Atlanta “ Constitution,” for which many 
of his contributions have been originally written. 

He is also a frequent contributor both of prose and poetry to current literature, 
and he is the author of the following books: “ Uncle Remus, His Songs and His 
Sayings; the Folk-lore of the Old Plantation ” (New York, 1880), “Nights With 
Uncle Remus” (Boston, 1883), “Mingo and Other Sketches” (1883). 


MR. RABBIT, MR. FOX, AND MR. BUZZARD* 

(FROM “ UNCLE REMUS.”) 


NE evening when the little boy whose nights 
with Uncle Remus are as entertaining 

O 

as those Arabian ones of blessed memory, 
had finished supper and hurried out to sit with his 
venerable patron, he found the old man in great 
glee. Indeed, Uncle Remus was talking and laugh¬ 
ing to himself at such a rate that the little boy was 
afraid he had company. The truth is, Uncle Remus 
had heard the child coming, and when the rosy- 
cheeked chap put his head in at the door, was en¬ 
gaged in a monologue, the burden of which seemed to 
be— 

“ Ole Molly Har’, 

W’at you doin’ dar, 

Settin’ in de cornder 
Smokin’ yo’ seegyar ? ” 

As a matter of course this vasrue allusion reminded 
the little boy of the fact that the wicked Fox was 
t still in pursuit of the Rabbit, and he immediately put 
his curiosity in the shape of a question. 

“ Uncle Remus, did the Rabbit have to go clean 
away when he got loose from the Tar-Baby ? ” 

“ Bless grashus, honey, dat he didn’t. Who ? 
Him ? You dunno nuthin’ ’tall bout Brer Rabbit 
ef dat’s de way you puttin’ ’im down. Wat he 
gwine ’wav fer? He mouter stayed sorter close 
twel the pitch rub off’n his ha’r, but twern’t menny 
days ’fo’ he wuz loping up en down de naberhood 
same as ever, en I dunno ef he wern’t mo’ sassier 
dan befo’. 

“ Seem like dat de tale ’bout how he got mixt up 
wid de Tar-Baby got ’roun’ mongst de nabers. 

* Copyright, George 


Leas’ways, Miss Meadows en de girls got win’ un’ it, 
en de nex’ time Brer Rabbit paid um a visit, Miss 
Meadows tackled ’im ’bout it, en de gals sot up a 
monstus gigglement. Brer Rabbit, he sot up des ez 
cool ez a cowcumber, he did, en let ’em run on.” 

“Who was Miss Meadows, Uncle Remus?” in¬ 
quired the little boy. 

“ Don’t ax me, honey. She wuz in de tale, Miss 
Meadows en de gals wuz, en de tale I give you like 
hi't wer’ gun ter me. Brer Rabbit, he sot dar, he 
did, sorter lam’ like, en den bimeby he cross his legs, 
he did, and wink his eye slow, en up en say, sezee: 

“ ‘Ladies, Brer Fox wuz my daddy’s ridin’-hoss 
for thirty year ; maybe mo’, but thirty year dat I 
knows un,’ sezee; en den he paid um his specks, en 
tip his beaver, en march off, he did, dez ez stiff en 
ez stuck up ez a fire-stick. 

“ Nex’ day, Brer Fox cum a callin’, and w’en he 
gun fer to laff ’bout Brer Rabbit, Miss Meadows en 
de gals, dey ups and tells im ’bout w’at Brer Rabbit 
say. Den Brer Fox grit his toof sho’ nuff, he did, 
en he look mighty dumpy, but when he riz fer to go 
he up en say, sezee; 

“ ‘ Ladies, I ain’t ’sputing w’at you say, but I’ll 
make Brer Rabbit chaw up his words en spit um out 
right yer whar you kin see ’im,’ sezee, en wid dat off 
Brer Fox marcht. 

“ En w’en he got in de big road, he shuck de dew 
off’n his tail, en made a straight shoot fer Brer 
Rabbit’s house. W’en he got dar, Brer Rabbit wuz 
spectin’ un him, en de do’ wuz shut fas’. Brer Fox 
knock. Nobody ain’t ans’er. Brer Fox knock. No- 

Routledge & Sons. 













374 


JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 


body ans’er. Den he knock agin—blam! blam! 
Den Brer Rabbit holler out, mighty weak : 

“ ‘ Is dat you, Brer Fox? I want you ter run en 
fetch de doctor. Dat bit er parsley w’at I e’t dis 
mawnin’ is gittin’ way wid me. Do, please, Brer 
Fox, run quick,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 

“ ‘ I come atter you, Brer Rabbit,’ sez Brer Fox, 
sezee. ‘ Dere’s gwinter be a party up at Miss 
Meadow’s,’ sezee. ‘ All de gals’ll be dere, en I 
promus’ dat I’d fetch you. De gals, dey lowed dat 
hit wouldn’t be no party ’ceppin I fetch you,’ sez 
Brer Fox, sezee. 

“ Den Brer Rabbit say he wuz too sick, en Brer 
Fox say he wuzzent, en dar dey had it up and down 
sputin’ en contendin’. Brer Rabbit say he can’t 
walk. Brer Fox say he tote ’im. Brer Rabbit say 
how? Brer Fox say in his arms. Brer Rabbit say 
he drap ’im. Brer Fox ’low he won’t. Bimeby 
Brer Rabbit say he go ef Brer Fox tote im on his 
back. Brer Fox say he would. Brer Rabbit say he 
can’t ride widout a saddle. Brer Fox say he git de 
saddle. Brer Rabbit say he can’t set in saddle less 
he have a bridle for to hoi’ by. Brer Fox say he 
git de bridle. Brer Rabbit say he can’t ride widout 
bline bridle, kaze Brer Fox be shyin’ at stumps ’long 
de road, en fling im off. Brer Fox say he git bline 
bridle. Den Brer Rabbit say he go. Den Brer Fox 
say he ride Brer Rabbit mos’ up to Miss Meadows’s, 
en den he could git down en walk de balance ob de 
way. Brer Rabbit ’greed, en den Brer Fox lipt out 
atter de saddle en de bridle. 

Co’se Brer Rabbit know de game dat Brer Fox 

wuz fixin’ fer ter play, en he ’termin’ fer ter out-do 

’im; en by de time he koam his h’ar en twis’ his 

mustarsh, en sorter rig up, yer come Brer Fox, saddle 

and bridle on, en lookin’ ez peart ez a circus pony. 

He trot up ter de do’ en stun’ dar pawin’ de ground 

en chompin’ de bit same like sho’ nuff hos, en Brer 

Rabbit he mount, he did, en day amble off. Brer 

Fox can’t see behirne wid de bline bridle on, but 

bimebv he feel Brer Rabbit raise one er his foots. 

%/ 

“ ‘ W’at you doin’ now, Brer Rabbit ? ’ sezee. 

“ ‘Short ain’ de lef stir’p, Brer Fox,’ sezee. 

“ Bimeby Brer Rabbit raise de udder foot. 

“ ‘ W’at you doin’ now, Brer Rabbit ?’ sezee. 

“ ‘ Pullin’ down my pants, Brer Fox,’ sezee. 

“ All de time, bless grashus, honey, Brer Rabbit 


was puttin’ on his spurrers, en w’en dey got close to 
Miss Meadows’s, whar Brer Rabbit wuz to git off en 
Brer Fox made a motion fer ter stan’ still, Brer 
Rabbit slap the spurrers inter Brer Fox flanks, en 
you better b’lieve he got over groun’. W’en dey 
got ter de house, Miss Meadows en all de girls wuz 
settin’ on de peazzer, en stidder stoppin’ at de gate 
Brer Rabbit rid on by, he did, en den come gallopin’ 
down de road en up ter de hoss-rack, w’ich he hitch 
Brer Fox at, en den he santer inter de house, he did, 
en shake ban’s wid de gals, en set dar, smokin' his 
seegyar same ez a town man. Bimeby he draw in 
long puff, en den let hit out in a cloud, en squar his- 
se’f back, en holler out, he did : 

“ ‘ Ladies, ain’t I done tell you Brer Fox wuz de 
ridin’ boss fer our fambly ? He sorter losin' his gait 
now, but I speck I kin fetch ’im all right in a rnont’ 
or so,’ sezee. 

“ En den Brer Rabbit sorter grin, he did, en de 
gals giggle, en Miss Meadows, she praise up de pony, 
en dar wuz Brer Fox hitch fas’ ter de rack, en 
couldn’t he’p hisse’f.” 

“ Is that all, Uncle Remus?” asked the little boy, 
as the old man paused. 

“ Dat ain’t all, honey, but ’twont do fer to give 
out too much c-loff for ter cut one pa’r pants,” replied 
the old man sententiously. 

When “ Miss Sally’s ” little boy went to Uncle 
Remus the next night, he found the old man in a 
bad humor. 

“ I ain’t tellin’ no tales ter bad chilluns,” said 
Uncle Remus curtly. 

“ But, Uncle Remus, I ain’t bad,” said the little 
boy plaintively. 

“ Who dat chunkin’ dem chickens dis mawnin’ ? 
Who dat knockin’ out fokes’s eyes wid dat Yaller- 
bammer sling des ’fo’ dinner ? Who dat sickin’ dat 
pinter puppy atter my pig ? Who dat scatterin’ my 
ingun sets ? Who dat Hingin’ rocks on top er my 
house, w’ich a little mo’ en one un em would er drap 
spang on my head ! ” 

“ Well, now. Uncle Remus, I didn’t go to do it. I 
won’t do so any more. Please, Uncle Remus, if you , 
will tell me, 111 run to the house, and bring you 
some tea-cakes.” 

“ Seein’ urn’s better’n hearin’ tell un em,” replied 
the old man, the severity of his countenance relax- 







JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 


375 


ing somewhat; but the little boy darted out, and in 
a few minutes came running back with bis pockets 
full and bis hands full. 

“ I lay yo’ mammy ’ll ’spishun dat de rats’ stum- 
mucks is widenin’ in dis naberhood w’en she come 
fer ter count up ’er cakes,’’ said Uncle Remus, with 
a chuckle. 

“ Lemme see. I mos’ dis’member wbarbouts Brer 
Fox and Brer Babbit wuz.” 

“ The rabbit rode the Fox to Miss Meadows’s and 
bitched him to the horse-rack,” said the little boy. 

“W y co’se he did,” said Uncle Remus. “ Co’se 
he did. Well, Brer Rabbit rid Brer Fox up, he did, 
en tied im to de rack, en den sot out in the peazzer 
wid de gals a smokin’ er his seegyar wid mo’ proud¬ 
ness dan w’at you mos’ ever see. Bey talk, en dey 
sing, en dey play on de peanner, de gals did, twel 
bimeby hit come time for Brer Rabbit fer to be gwine, 
en he tell um all good-by, en strut out to de hoss- 
rack same’s ef he was de king er der patter-rollers ? 
en den he mount Brer Fox en ride off. 

“ Brer Fox ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ ’tall. He des rack 
off, he did, en keep his mouf shet, en Brer Rabbit 
know’d der wuz bizness cookin’ up fer him, en he feel 
monstous skittish. Brer Fox amble on twel he git in de 
long lane, outer sight er Miss Meadows’s house, en 
den he tu’n loose, he did. He rip en he r’ar, en he 
cuss en he swar; he snort en he cavort.” 

“ What was he doing that for. Uncle Remus?” 
the little boy inquired. 

“ He wuz tryin’ fer ter fling Brer Rabbit off’n his 
back, bless yo’ soul! But he des might ez well er 
rastle wid his own shadder. Every time he hump 
hisse’f Brer Rabbit slap de spurrers in ’im, en dar 
dey had it up en down. Brer Fox fa’rly to’ up de 
groun’, he did, en he jump so high en he jump so 
quick, dat he mighty nigh snatch his own tail off. 
Bey kep’ on gwine on dis way twel bimeby Brer Fox 
lay down en roll over, he did, en dis sorter unsettle 
Brer Rabbit, but by de time Brer Fox got en his 
footses agin, Brer Rabbit wuz gwine thoo de under- 
bresh mo’ samer dan a race hoss. Brer Fox, he lit 
out atter ’im, he did, en he push Brer Rabbit so 
close, dat it wuz ’bout all he could do fer ter git in a 
holler tree. Hole too little fer Brer Fox fer to git 

4 

in. en he hatter lay down en res’ en gadder his mine 
tenredder. 


“While he wuz layin’ dar, Mr. Buzzard come 
floppin’ long, en seein’ Brer Fox stretch out on the 
groun’, he lit en view the premusses. Ben Mr. Buz¬ 
zard sorter shake his wing, en put his head on one 
side, en say to hisse’f like, sezee: 

“ ‘ Brer Fox dead, en I so sorry,’ sezee. 

“ ‘ No I ain’t dead, nudder,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. 

£ I got ole man Rabbit pent up in yer,’ sezee, ‘ en 
I’m gwineter git ’im dis time, ef it take twel Chris’- 
mus,’ sezee. 

“ Ben, atter some mo’ palaver, Brer Fox make a 
bargain dat Mr. Buzzard wuz ter watch de hole, en 
keep Brer Rabbit dar wiles Brer Fox went atter his 
axe. Ben Brer Fox, he lope off, he did, en Mr. 
Buzzard, he tuck up his stan’ at de hole. Bimeby, 
w’en all get still, Brer Rabbit sorter scramble down 
close ter de hole, he did, en holler out: 

“ ‘ Brer Fox ! Oh ! Brer Fox ! ’ 

“ Brer Fox done gone, en nobody say nuthin.’ 
Ben Brer Rabbit squall out like he wuz mad: 

“ ‘ You needn’t talk less you wanter,’ sezee ; 1 1 
knows youer dar, an I ain’t keerin’, sezee. ‘ I dez 
wanter tell you dat I wish mighty bad Brer Tukkey 
Buzzard was here,’ sezee. 

“ Ben Mr. Buzzard try to talk like Brer Fox : 

“ ‘ Wat you want wid Mr. Buzzard? ’ sezee. 

“ ‘ Oh, nuthin’ in ’tickler, ’cep’ dere’s de fattes* 
gray squir’l in yer dat ever I see,’ sezee, ‘ en ef Brer 
Tukkey Buzzard was ’roun’ he’d be mighty glad fer 
ter git ’im,’ sezee. 

“ 4 How Mr. Buzzard gwine ter git him ? ’ sez de 
Buzzard, sezee. 

“ ‘ Well, dar’s a little hole, roun’ on de udder side 
er de tree,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘ en ef Brer Tuk¬ 
key Buzzard was here so he could take up his stan’ 
dar, sezee, ‘ I’d drive dat squir’l out,’ sezee. 

“ ‘ Brive ’im out, den,’ sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee, 
£ en I’ll see dat Brer Tukkey Buzzard gits ’im,’ 
sezee. 

“ Ben Brer Rabbit kick up a racket, like he wer’ 
drivin’ sumpin’ out, en Mr. Buzzard he rush ’roun’ 
fer ter ketch de squir’l, en Brer Rabbit, he dash out, 
he did, en he des fly fer home. 

“ Well, Mr. Buzzard he feel mighty lonesome, he 
did, but he done prommust Brer Eox dat he’d stay^ 
en he termin’ fer ter sorter hang ’roun’ en jine in de 
joke. En he ain’t hatter wait long, nudder, kase 



0/0 


JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 


bimeby yer come Brer Fox gallopin’ tboo de woods 
wid his axe on his shoulder. 

“ 1 How you speck Brer Babbit gittin' on, Brer 
Buzzard?’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. 

“ ‘ Oh, he in dar,’ sez Brer Buzzard, sezee. ‘ He 
mighty still, dough. I speck he takin’ a nap,’ sezee. 

“ ‘ Ben I’m des in time fer te wake ’im up,’ sez 
Brer Fox, sezee. En wid dat he fling off his coat, 
en spit in his ban’s, en grab de axe. Ben he draw 
back en come down on de tree—pow ! En eve’y 
time he come down wid de axe—pow !—Mr. Buz¬ 
zard, he step high, he did, en hollar out : 

“ ‘ Oh, he in dar, Brer Fox. He in dar, sho.’ 

“ En eve’y time a chip ud fly off, Mr. Buzzard, 
he’d jump, en dodge, en hole his head sideways, he 
would, en holler: 

“ 1 He in dar, Brer Fox. I done heerd im. He 
in dar, sho.’ 

“ ‘ En Brer Fox, he lammed away at dat holler 
tree, he did, like a man mauling’ rails, twel bimeby 
atter he done got de tree most’ cut thoo, he stop fer 
ter ketch his bref, en he seed Mr. Buzzard laffin’ be¬ 
hind his back, he did, en right den en dar, widout 
gwine enny fudder, Brer Fox he smelt a rat. But 
Mr. Buzzard, he keep on holler’n : 

“ ‘ He in dar, Brer Fox. He in dar, sho. I done 
seed im.’ 

“ Ben Brer Fox, he make like he peepin’ up de 
holler, en he say, sezee : 

u ‘ Bun yer, Brer Buzzard, en look ef dis ain’t 
Brer Babbit’s foot hanging down yer.’ 

“ En Mr. Buzzard, he come steppin’ up, he did, 
same ez ef he were treddin’ on kurkle-burrs, en he 
stick his head in de hole ; en no sooner did he done 
dat dan Brer Fox grab im. Mr. Buzzard flap his 
wings, en scramble roun’ right smartually, he did, 
but twan no use. Brer Fox had de ’vantage er de 


grip, he did, en he hilt ’im right down ter de groun’. 
Ben Mr. Buzzard squall out, sezee: 

“ ‘ Lemme ’lone, Brer Fox. Tu’n me loose,’ sezee; 
1 Brer Babbit’ll git out. Youer gittin’ close at ’im,' 
sezee, ‘ en leb’m mo’ licks’ll fetch im,’ sezee. 

u ‘ I'm nigher ter you, Brer Buzzard,’ sez Brer 
Fox, sezee, 1 dan I'll be ter Brer Babbit dis day, 
sezee. ; Wat you fool me fer? ’ sezee. 

“ ‘ Lemme lone, Brer Fox,’ sez Mr. Buzzard, 
sezee; ‘ my ole ’oman waitin’ for me. Brer Babbit 
in dar,’ sezee, 

“ Bar’s a bunch er his fur on dat black-be’y bush,’ 
sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘ en dat ain’t de way he come,’ 
sezee. 

“ Ben Mr. Buzzard up’n tell Brer Fox how ’twuz, 
en he low’d, Mr. Buzzard did, dat Brer Babbit wuz 
de low-downest w’atsizname w’at he ever run up wid. 
Ben Brer Fox say, sezee : 

“ ‘ Bat’s needer here ner dar, Brer Buzzard,’ sezee. 
‘I lef’ you yer fer ter watch dish yer hole en I lef’ 
Brer Babbit in dar. I comes back en I fines you at 
de hole, en Brer Babbit ain’t in dar,’ sezee. 1 I’m 
gwinter make you pay fer’t. I done bin tampered 
wid twel plum down ter de sap sucker'll set on a log 
en sassy me. I’m gwinter fling you in a bresh-heap 
en burn you up,’ sezee. 

“ ‘ Ef you fling me on der fier, Brer Fox, I'll fly 
’way,’ sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee. 

u 1 Well, den, I'll settle yo’ hash right now,’ sez 
Brer Fox, sezee, en wid dat he grab Mr. Buzzard by 
de tail, he did, en make fer ter dash im ’gin de 
groun’, but des ’bout dat time de tail fedders come 
out, en Mr. Buzzard sail off like wunner dese yer 
berloons, en ez he riz, he holler back : 

“ ‘ You gimme good start, Brer Fox,' sezee, en 
Brer Fox sot dar en watch ’im fly outer sight.” 







ROBERT J. BURDETTE. 



HE American people have a kindly feeling for the men who make 
them laugh, and in no other country does a humorist have a more 
appreciative public. The result has been, that in a country in which 
the average native has a clearly marked vein of humor, the genuine 
“ funny man ” is always sure of a hearty welcome. We have a long 
list of writers and lecturers who have gained a wide popularity 
through their mirth-provoking powers, and “ Bob Burdette ” holds an honorable 
place in this guild of “ funny men.” 

He was born in Greensborough, Pennsylvania, July 30, 1844, though he 
removed early in life to Peoria, Ill., where he received his education in the public 
schools. 

He enlisted in the Civil War and served as a private from 1862 to the end of 
the war. 

He began his journalistic career on the Peoria “ Transcript,” and, after periods of 
editorial connection with other local newspapers, he became associate editor of the 
Burlington “ Hawkeye,” Iowa. His humorous contributions to this journal were 
widely copied and they gave him a general reputation. His reputation as a writer 
had prepared the way for his success as a lecturer, and in 1877 he entered the lec¬ 
ture field, in which he has been eminently successful. He has lectured in nearly all 
the cities of the United States, and he never fails to amuse his listeners. 

He is a lay preacher of the Baptist Church, and it is often a surprise to those 
who have heard only his humorous sayings to hear him speak with earnestness and 
serious persuasiveness of the deeper things of life, for he is a man of deep exper¬ 
iences and of pure ideals. 

His most popular lectures have been those on “The Rise and Fall of the Mus¬ 
tache,” “ Home,” and “ The Pilgrimage of the Funny Man.” He has published 
in book-form, “ The Rise and Fall of the Mustache and Other Hawkeyetems ” 
(Burlington, 1877), “ Hawkey es ” (1880), “Life of William Penn” (New York, 
1882), a volume in the series of “ Comic Biographies ; ” and “ Innacli Garden and 
other Comic Sketches” (1886). 

He has been a frequent contributor to the Ladies' 1 Home Journal and other cur¬ 
rent literature, and he has recently written a convulsive description of “ How I 
Learned to Ride the Bicycle,” which appeared in the Wheelmen. 

He has for some years made his home at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and he 
enjoys a large circle of friends. 


377 











































378 


ROBERT J. BURDETTE. 


THE MOVEMENT CUBE FOR RHEUMATISM* 


NE day, not a great while ago, Mr. Mid- 
dlerib read in his favorite paper a para¬ 
graph copied from the Praeger Land- 
wirthschaftliches Wochenblatt , a German paper, which 
is an accepted authority on such points, stating that 
the sting of a bee was a sure cure for rheumatism, 
and citing several remarkable instances in which peo- 
had been perfectly cured by this abrupt remedy. 
Mr. Middlerib did not stop to reflect that a paper 
with such a name as that would be very apt to say 
anything; he only thought of the rheumatic twinges 
that grappled his knees once in a while, and made 
life a burden to him. 

He read the article several times, and pondered 
over it. He understood that the stinging must be 
done scientifically and thoroughly. The bee, as he 
understood the article, was to be gripped by the ears 
and set down upon the rheumatic joint, and held 
there until it stung itself stingless. He had some 
misgivings about the matter. He knew it would 
hurt. He hardly thought it could hurt any worse 
than the rheumatism, and it had been so many years 
since he was stung by a bee that he had almost for¬ 
gotten what it felt like. He had, however, a general 
feeling that it would hurt some. But desperate 
diseases required desperate remedies, and Mr. Mid¬ 
dlerib was willing to undergo any amount of suffer¬ 
ing if it would cure his rheumatism. 

He contracted with Master Middlerib for a limited 
supply of bees. There were bees and bees, hum¬ 
ming and buzzing about in the summer air, but Mr. 
Middlerib did not know how to get them. He felt, 
however, that he could depend upon the instincts and 
methods of boyhood. He knew that if there was 
any way in heaven or earth whereby the shyest bee 
that ever lifted a 200-pound man off the clover, 
could be induced to enter a wide-mouthed glass 
bottle, his son knew that way. 

For the small sum of one dime Master Middlerib 
agreed to procure several, to-wit: six bees, age not 
specified; but as Mr. Middlerib was left in uncer¬ 
tainty as to the race, it was made obligatory upon the 
contractor to have three of them honey, and three 
humble, or in the generally accepted vernacular, 
bumble bees. Mr. Middlerib did not tell his son 
what he wanted those bees for t and the boy went off 


on his mission, with his head so full of astonishment 
that it fairly whirled. Evening brings all home, and 
the last rays of the declining sun fell upon Master 
Middlerib with a short, wide-mouthed bottle com¬ 
fortably populated with hot, ill-natured bees, and 
Mr. Middlerib and a dime. The dime and the bottle 
changed hands and the boy was happy. 

Mr. Middlerib put the bottle in his coat pocket 
and went into the house, eyeing everybody he met 
very suspiciously, as though he had made up his 
mind to sting to death the first person that said 
“ bee ” to him. He confided his guilty secret to none 
of his family. He hid his bees in his bedroom, and 
as he looked at them just before putting them awa}’, 
he half wished the experiment was safely over. He 
wished the imprisoned bees didn’t look so hot and 
cross. With exquisite care he submerged the bottle 
in a basin of water, and let a few drops in on the 
heated inmates, to cool them off’. 

At the tea-table he had a great fight. Miss Mid¬ 
dlerib, in the artless simplicity of her romantic nature 
said: “I smell bees. How the odor brings up-” 

But her father glared at her, and said, with super¬ 
fluous harshness and execrable Grammar: 

“ Hush up ! You don’t smell nothing.” 

Whereupon Mrs. Middlerib asked him if he had 
eaten anything that disagreed with him, and Miss 
Middlerib said : “ Why, pa ! ” and Master Middlerib 
smiled as he wondered. 

Bedtime came at last, and the night was warm 
and sultry. Under various false pretences, Mr. Mid¬ 
dlerib strolled about the house until everybody else 
was in bed, and then he sought his room. He turned 
the night-lamp down until its feeble rays shone 
dimly as a death-light. 

Mr. Middlerib disrobed slowly—very slowly. When 
at last he was ready to go lumbering into his peace¬ 
ful couch, he heaved a profound sigh, so full of ap¬ 
prehension and grief that Mrs. Middlerib, who was 
awakened by it, said if it gave him so much pain to 
come to bed, perhaps he had better sit up all night. 
Mr. Middlerib checked another sigh, but said nothing 
and crept into bed. After lying still a few moments 
he reached out and got his bottle of bees. 

It is not an easy thing to do, to pick one bee out 
of a bottle full, with his fingers, and not get into 



* Copyright, R. J. Burdette. 











ROBERT J. BURDETTE. 


379 


trouble. The first bee Mr. Middlerib got was a little 
brown honey-bee that wouldn’t weigh half an ounce 
if you picked him up by the ears, but if you lifted 
him by the hind leg as Mr. Middlerib did, would 
weigh as much as the last end of a bay mule. Mr. 
Middlerib could not repress a groan. 

“What’s the matter with you?” sleepily asked 
his wife. 

It was very hard for Mr. Middlerib to say ; he 
only knew his temperature had risen to 8b all over, 
and to 197 on the end of his thumb. He reversed 
the bee and pressed the warlike terminus of it firmly 
against his rheumatic knee. 

It didn’t hurt so badly as he thought it would. 

It didn’t hurt at all! 

Then Mr. Middlerib remembered that when the 
honey-bee stabs a human foe it generally leaves its 
harpoon in the wound, and the invalid knew then the 
only thing the bee had to sting with was doing its 
work at the end of his thumb. 

He reached his arm out from under the sheet, and 
dropped this disabled atom of rheumatism liniment 
on the carpet. Then, after a second of blank wonder, 
he began to feel around for the bottle, and wished he 
knew what he had done with it. 

In the meantime, strange things had been going 
on. When he caught hold of the first bee, Mr. 
Middlerib, for reasons, drew it out in such haste that 
for the time he forgot all about the bottle and its 
remedial contents, and left it lying uncorked in the 
bed. In the darkness there had been a quiet but 
general emigration from that bottle. The bees, their 
winirs closed with the water Mr. Middlerib had 
poured upon them to cool and tranquilize them, were 
crawling aimlessly about over the sheet. While Mr. 
Middlerib was feeling around for it, his ears were 
suddenly thrilled and his heart frozen by a wild, 
piercing scream from his wife. 

“ Murder ! ” she screamed, “ murder ! Oh, help 
me ! Help ! help ! ” 

Mr. Middlerib sat bold upright in bed. His hair 
stood on end. The night was very warm, but he 
turned to ice in a minute. 


“Where, oh, where,” he said, with pallid lips, as 
he felt all over the bed in frenzied haste—“ where in 
the world are those infernal bees?” 

And a large “bumble,” with a sting as pitiless as 
the finger of scorn, just then lighted between Mr. 
Middlerib’s shoulders, and went for his marrow, and 
said calmly: “ Here is one of them.” 

And Mrs. Middlerib felt ashamed of her feeble 
screams when Mr. Middlerib threw up both arms, 
and, with a howl that made the windows rattle, 
roared: 

“ Take him off! Oh, land of Scott, somebody take 
him off! ” 

And when a little honey-bee began tickling the 
sole of Mrs. Middlerib’s foot, she shrieked that the 
house was bewitched, and immediately went into 
spasms. 

The household was aroused by this time. Miss 
Middlerib, and Master Middlerib and the servants 
were pouring into the room, adding to the general 
confusion, by howling at random and asking irrelevant 
questions, while they gazed at the figure of a man, 
a little on in years, pawing fiercely at the unattain¬ 
able spot in the middle of his back, while he danced 
an unnatural, weird, wicked-looking jig by the dim 
religious light of the night lamp. 

And while he danced and howled, and while they 
gazed and shouted, a navy-blue wasp, that Master 
Middlerib had put in the bottle for good measure and 
variety, and to keep the menagerie stirred up, had 
dried his legs and wings with a corner of the sheet, 

| after a preliminary circle or two around the bed, to 
get up his motion and settle down to a working gait, 
fired himself across the room, and to his dying day 
Mr. Middlerib will always believe that one of the 
servants mistook him for a burglar, and shot him. 

No one, not even Mr. Middlerib himself, could 
doubt that he was, at least for the time, most thor¬ 
oughly cured of rheumatism. His own boy could 
not have carried himself more lightly or with greater 
agility. But the cure was not permanent, and Mr. 
Middlerib does not like to talk about it. 







LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 

AUTHOR OF “ LITTLE WOMEN.” 

HE famous author of “ Little Women,” “Little Men,” and “Old- 
Fashioned Girls,” made her beginning, as have many who have done 
any good or acquired fame in the world, by depending on herself. In 
other words, she was the architect of her own fortune, and has left be¬ 
hind her works that will endure to gladden the hearts of millions of boys 
and girls. But she has done more. She has left behind her a record 
of a life within itself, a benediction and inspiration to every thoughtful girl who reads it. 

While Miss Alcott always considered New England her home, she was actually 
born in Germantown, Philadelphia, November 29, 1832. Her father, Amos Bron¬ 
son Alcott, after his marriage in New England, accepted a position as principal of a 
Germantown Academy, which he occupied from 1831 to 1834, and afterwards taught 
a children’s school at his own residence, but he was unsuccessful and he returned to 
Boston in 1835, when Louisa was two years old. 

From this time forward, Mr. Alcott was a close friend and associate of the poet 
and philosopher Emerson, sharing with him his transcendental doctrines, and join¬ 
ing in the Brook-Farm experiment of ideal communism at Roxbury, Mass. The 
Brook-Farm experiment brought Mr. Alcott to utter financial ruin, and after its 
failure he removed to Concord, where he continued to live until his death. It was 
at this time that Louisa, although a mere child, formed a noble and unselfish pur¬ 
pose to retrieve the family fortune. When only fifteen years of age, she turned her 
thoughts to teaching, her first school being in a barn and attended by the child¬ 
ren of Mr. Emerson and other neighbors. Almost at the same time she began to 
compose fairy stories, which were contributed to papers ; but these early productions 
brought her little if any compensation, and she continued to devote herself to teach¬ 
ing, receiving her own education privately from her father. “ When I was twenty- 
one years of age,” she wrote many years later to a friend, “ I took my little earnings 
($20) and a few clothes, and went out to seek my fortune, though I might have sat still 
and been supported by rich friends. All those hard years were teaching me what I 
afterwards put into books, and so I made my fortune out of my seeming misfortune.” 

Two years after this brave start Miss Alcott’s earliest book, “ Fairy Tales,” was 
published (1855). About the same time her work began to be accepted by the 
“ Atlantic Monthly ” and other magazines of reputation. During the winters of 
1862 and ’63 she volunteered her services and went to Washington and served as a 
nurse in the government hospitals, and her experiences here were embodied in a 

380 


































EDWARD S. ELLIS 


^ — ^]{ 

HORATIO ALGER JR 


MARTHA FINLEY 


LOUISA M.ALCOTT 


'££Mm>OD 











































LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 


381 


series of graphic letters to her mother and sisters. These letters she revised and 
had printed in the “ Boston Commonwealth ” in the summer of 1863. They were 
afterwards issued in a volume entitled “ Hospital Sketches and Camp-Fire Stories.” 
This was her second book, which, together with her magazine articles, opened the 
way to a splendid career as an author. 

Being naturally fond of young people, Miss Alcott turned her attention from this 
time forward to writing for them. Her distinctive books for the young are entitled 
“Moods” (1864); “Morning Glories” (1867); “Little Women” (1868), which 
washer first decided success; “ An Old-Fashioned Girl” (1869); “Little Men” 
(1871); “Work” (1873); “Eight Cousins” (1875), and its sequel, “Bose in 
Bloom ” (1877), which perhaps ranks first among her books ; “ Under the Lilacs” 
(1878) ; “Jack and Jill” (1880), and “Lulu’s Library” (1885). Besides these she 
has put forth, at different times, several volumes of short stories, among which are 
“ Cupid and Chow-Chow,” “ Silver Pitchers ” and “ Aunt Joe’s Scrap-bag.” 

From childhood Miss Alcott was under the tutelage of the Emersonian school, 
and was not less than her father an admirer of the “Seer of Concord.” “Those 
Concord days,” she writes, “were among the happiest of my life, for we had the 
charming playmates in the little Emersons, Channings, and Hawthornes, with their 
illustrious parents, to enjoy our pranks and join our excursions.” 

In speaking of Emerson she also wrote to a young woman a few years before 
her death: “Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson have done much to 
help me see that one can shape life best by trying to build up a strong and noble 
character, through good books, wise people’s society, and by taking an interest in 
all reforms that help the world, . . . believing always that a loving and just Father 
cares for us, sees our weakness, and is near to help if we call.” Continuing she 
asks: “Have you read Emerson? He is called a Pantheist, or believer in nature, 
instead of God. He was truly a Christian and saw God in nature, finding strength 
and comfort in the same sweet influence of the great Mother as well as the great 
Father of all. I, too, believe this, and when tired, sad or tempted, find my best 
comfort in the woods, the sky, the healing solitude that lets my poor, weary soul 
find the rest, the fresh hopes, the patience which only God can give us.” 

The chief aim of Miss Alcott seemed to have been to make others happy. Many 
are the letters treasured up by young authors who often, but never in vain, sought 
her advice and kind assistance. To one young woman who asked her opinion on 
certain new books, in 1884, she wrote: “About books; yes, I’ve read ‘Mr. Isaacs 
and ‘Dr. Claudius,’* and like them both. The other, “To Leeward,” is not so 
good ; ‘Little Pilgrim’ was pretty, but why try to paint heaven ? Let it alone and 
j>repare for it, whatever it is, sure that God knows what we need and deserve. I 
will send you Emerson’s ‘Essays.’ Bead those marked. I hope they will be as 
helpful to you as they have been to me and many others. They will bear study | 
and I think are what you need to feed upon now.” The marked essays were those 
on “Compensation,” “Love,” “Friendship,” “Heroism, and “Self-Reliance. 

Miss Alcott’s kindness for young people grew with her advancing years. Being 
a maiden lady without daughters ot her own, she was looked up to and delighted 
in being considered as a foster-mother to aspiring girls all over the land. How 

* These are the books that made F. Marion Crawford famous. 


382 


LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 


many times she wrote similar sentences to this: “Write freely to me, dear girl, and 
if I can help you in any way be sure I will.” This was written to one she had 
never seen and only four years before her death, when she was far from well. 

Miss Alcott died in Boston, March 6, 1888, at the age of fifty-six years, and just 
two days after her aged father, who was eighty-five years old, and who had 
depended on her many years, passed away. Though a great advocate of work for 
the health, she was, no doubt, a victim of overwork; for it is said she frequently 
devoted from twelve to fifteen hours a day to her literary labors, . . . besides looking 
after her business affairs and caring personally for her old father, for many years 
an invalid. In addition to this, she educated some of her poor relatives, and still 
further took the place of a mother to little Lulu, the daughter of her sister, May, 
who died when the child was an infant. 




HOW JO MADE FRIENDS* 


(FROM “ LITTLE WOMEN.”) 


HAT boy is suffering for society and fun,” 
she said to herself. “ His grandpa don’t 
know what’s good for him, and keeps him 
shut up all alone. Fie needs a lot of jolly boys to 
play with, or somebody young and lively. I’ve a 
great mind to go over and tell the old gentleman so.” 

The idea amused Jo, who liked to do daring things, 
and was always scandalizing Meg by her queer per¬ 
formances. The plan of “going over” was not for¬ 
gotten ; and, when the snowy afternoon came, Jo 
resolved to try what could be done. She saw Mr. 
Laurence drive off, and then sailed out to dig her way 
down to the hedge, where she paused and took a sur¬ 
vey. All quiet; curtains down to the lower win¬ 
dows ; servants out of sight, and nothing human 
visible but a curly black head leaning on a thin hand, 
at the upper window. 

“ There he is,” thought Jo ; “ poor boy, all alone, 
and sick, this dismal day ! It’s a shame! I’ll toss 
up a snowball, and make him look out, and then say 
a kind word to him.” 

Up went a handful of soft snow, and the head 
turned at once, showing a face which lost its listless 
look in a minute, as the big eyes brightened, and the 
mouth began to smile. Jo nodded, and laughed, 
and flourished her broom, as she called out,— 

“ How do you do ? Are you sick ?” 

Laurie opened the window and croaked out as 
hoarsely as a raven,— 



“ Better, thank you. I’ve had a horrid cold, and 
have been shut up a week.” 

“ I'm sorry. What do you amuse yourself with ?” 

“ Nothing ; it’s as dull as tombs up here.” 

“ Don't you read?” 

“ Not much ; they won’t let me.” 

“ Can’t somebody read to you?” 

“ Grandpa does, sometimes ; but my books don’t in¬ 
terest him, and I hate to ask Brooke all the time.” 

“ Have some one come and see you, then.” 

“ There isn’t any one I’d like to see. Boys make 
such a row, and my head is weak.” 

“ Isn’t there some nice girl wlio’d read and amuse 
you ? Girls are quiet, and like to play nurse.” 

“ Don’t know any.” 

“ You know me,” began Jo, then laughed and 
stopped. 

“ So I do ! Will you come, please ?” cried Laurie. 

“ I’m not quiet and nice; but I’ll come, if mother 
will let me. I’ll go ask her. Shut that window, 
like a good boy, and wait till I come. 

“ Oh ! that does me lots of good ; tell on, please,” 
he said, taking his face out of the sofa-cushion, red 
and shining with merriment. 

Much elevated with her success, Jo did “ tell on,” 
all about their plays and plans, their hopes and fears 
for father, and the most interesting events of the 
little world in which the sisters lived. Then they got 
to talking about books ; and to Jo’s delight she found 


^Copyright, Roberts Bros. 









LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. 


383 


that Laurie loved them as well as she did, and had 
read even more than herself. 

“ If you like them so much, come down and see ours. 
Grandpa is out, so you needn’t be afraid,” said Laurie, 
getting up. 

“ I’m not afraid of anything,” returned Jo, with a 
toss of the head. 

“ I don t believe you are!” exclaimed the boy, 
looking at her with much admiration, though he 
privately thought she would have good reason to be a 
trifle afraid of the old gentleman, if she met him in 
some of his moods. 

The atmosphere of the whole house being summer- 
like, Laurie led the way from room to room, letting 
Jo stop to examine whatever struck her fancy; and 
so at last they came to the library, where she clapped 
her hands, and pranced, as she always did when 
specially delighted. It was lined with books, and 
there were pictures and statues, and distracting little 
cabinets full of coins and curiosities, and Sleep-Hol¬ 
low chairs, and queer tables, and bronzes; and, best 
of all, a great, open fireplace, with quaint tiles all 
round it. 

“ What richness!” sighed Jo, sinking into the 
depths of a velvet chair, and gazing about her with 
an air of intense satisfaction. “ Theodore Laurence, 
you ought to be the happiest boy in the world,” she 
added impressively. 

“ A fellow can’t live on books,” said Laurie, shak¬ 
ing his head, as he perched on a table opposite. 

Before he could say any more, a bell rang, and Jo 


flew up, exclaiming with alarm, “ Mercy me ! it’s your 
grandpa!” 

“ Well, what if it is? You are not afraid of any¬ 
thing, you know,” returned the boy, looking wicked. 

“ I think I am a little bit afraid of him, but I 
don’t know why I should be. Marmee said I might 
come, and I don’t think you are any the worse for 
it,” said Jo, composing herself, though she kept her 
eyes on the door. 

“ I’m a great deal better for it, and ever so much 
obliged. I’m afraid you are very tired talking to me ; 
it was so pleasant, I couldn’t bear to stop,” said Laurie 
gratefully. 

“ The doctor to see you, sir,” and the maid beckoned 
as she spoke. 

“ Would you mind if I left you for a minute ? I 
suppose I must see him,” said Laurie. 

“ Don’t mind me. I’m as happy as a cricket 
here,” answered Jo. 

Laurie went away, and his guest amused herself in 
her own way. She was standing before a fine por¬ 
trait of the old gentleman, when the door opened 
again, and, without turning, she said decidedly, “ I’m 
sure now that I shouldn’t be afraid of him, for he’s 
got kind eyes, though his mouth is grim, and he looks 
as if he had a tremendous will of his own. He isn’t 
as handsome as my grandfather, but I like him.” 

“ Thank you, ma’am,” said a gruff voice behind 
her; and there, to her great dismay, stood old Mr. 
Laurence. 





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WILLIAM TAYLOR ADAMS. 


THE WELL-BELOYED WHITER FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 



ROBABLY no literary man in America lias ministered to the pleasure 
of a greater number of our young people than William Taylor 
Adams, who is a native of Massachusetts and was born in Medway 
in 1822. He has devoted his life to young people; for more than 
twenty years as a teacher in the public schools of Boston, for many 
years a member of the school board of Dorchester, and since 1850 
as a writer of stories. In his earlier life, he was the editor of a periodical known as 
“ The Student and Schoolmate.” In 1881 he began the publication of “ Our Little 
Ones,” and later “ Oliver Optic’s Magazine for Boys and Girls.” His first book 
was published in 1853; it was entitled “ Hatchie, the Guardian Slave,” and had a 
large sale. It was followed by a collection of stories called “ In Doors and Out,” 
and in 1862 was completed “The Riverdale Series” of six volumes of stories for 
boys. Some of his other books are “The Boat Club;” “Woodville;” “Young 
America Abroad;” “ Starry Flag ;” “ Onward and Upward ; ” “ Yacht Club; ” and 
“ Great Western.” In all he has written at least a thousand stories for newspapers, 
and published about a hundred volumes. Among these are two novels for older 
readers : “ The Way of the World ” and “ Living Too Fast.” 

Mr. Adams’ style is both pleasing and simple. His stories are frequently based 
upon scenes of history and their influence is always for good. 


THE SLOOP THAT WENT TO THE BOTTOM.* 


(from “snug harbor,” 1883 .) 



TARBOARD your helm! hard a-starboard!” 
shouted Dory Dornwood, as he put the 
helm of the “ Gold wing; ” to port in order 
to avoid a collision with a steam launch which lay dead 
ahead of the schooner. 

“ Keep oflf! you will sink me ! ” cried a young man 
in a sloop-boat, which lay exactly in the course of the 
steam launch. “ That’s just what I mean to do, if 
you don’t come about,” yelled a man at the wheel of 


the steamer. “ Why didn’t you stop when I called 
to you ?” 

“ Keep off, or you will be into me!” screamed the 
skipper of the sloop, whose tones and manner indicated 
that he was very much terrified at the situation. 

And he had reason enough to be alarmed. It was 
plain, from his management of his boat, that he was 
but an indifferent boatman ; and probably he did not 
know what to do in the emergency. Dory had noticed 


* Copyright, Lee & Shepard. 

384 































































WILLIAM TAYLOR ADAMS. 


4 

the sloop coming up the lake with the steam launch 
astern of her. The latter had run ahead of the sloop, 
and had come about, it m w appeared, for the purpose 
of intercepting her. 

When the skipper of the sloop realized the inten¬ 
tion of the helmsman of the steamer, he put his helm 
to port; but he was too late. The sharp bow of the 
launch struck the frail craft amidships, and cut 
through her as though she had been made of card¬ 
board. 

The sloop filled instantly, and, a moment later, the 
young man in her was struggling on the surface of the 
water. The boat w T as heavily ballasted, and she went 
down like a lump of lead. It was soon clear to Dory 
that the skipper could not swim, for he screamed as 
though the end of all things had come. 

Very likely it would have been the end of all things 
to him, if Dory had not come about with the “ Gold, 
wing,” and stood over the place where the young man 
was vainly beating the water with his feet and hands. 
With no great difficulty the skipper of the “ Gold¬ 
wing.” who was an aquatic bird of the first watey 
pulled in the victim of the catastrophe, in spite of the 
apparent efforts of the sufferer to prevent him from 
doing so. 

“ You had a narrow squeak that time,” said Dory 
Dornwood, as soon as he thought the victim of the 
disaster was in condition to do a little talking. “ It 
is lucky you didn’t get tangled up in the rigging of 


385 

your boat. She went to the bottom like a pound of 
carpet-tacks ; and she would have carried you down in 
a hurry if you hadn’t let go in short metre.” 

“ I think I am remarkably fortunate in being 
among the living at this moment,” replied the stranger, 
looking out over the stern of the “ Goldwing.” “ That 
was the most atrocious thing a fellow ever did.” 

“What was?” inquired Dory, who was not quite 
sure what the victim meant by the remark, or whether 
he alluded to him or to the man in the steam launch. 

“ Why, running into me like that,” protested the 
passenger, with no little indignation in his tones. 

“ I suppose you came up from Burlington?” said 
Dory, suggestively, as though he considered an ex¬ 
planation on the part of the stranger to be in order at 
the present time. 

“ I have just come from Burlington,” answered the 
victim, who appeared to be disposed to say nothing 
more. “ Do you suppose I can get that boat again ?” 

“ I should say that the chance of getting her again 
was not first-rate. She went down where the water 
is about two hundred and fifty feet deep ; and it won’t 
be an easy thing to get hold of her,” replied Dory. 
“ If you had let him run into you between Diamond 
Island and Porter’s Bay, where the water is not more 
than fifty or sixty feet deep, you could have raised her 
without much difficulty. I don’t believe you will ever 
see her again.” 








SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT. 


FAVORITE WRITER FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. 


NE of the earliest papers devoted especially to young children was 
“The Little Pilgrim/’ edited for a number of years under the name 
of “Grace Greenwood,” by Mrs. Lippincott. It had a very wide 
popularity, and its little stories, poems, and page of puzzles brought 
pleasure into very many home circles. Mrs. Lippincott is the 
daughter of Doctor Tliaddeus Clarke. She was born in Pompey, 
New Y ork, in September, 1823, and lived during most of her childhood in 
Rochester. In 1842 she removed with her father to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, 
and in 1853 she was married to Leander K. Lippincott, of Philadelphia. She had 
early begun to write verses, and, in 1844, contributed some prose articles to “The 
New York Mirror,” adopting the name “Grace Greenwood,” which she has since 
made famous. Besides her work upon “The Little Pilgrim,” she has contributed 
for many years to “The Hearth and Home,” “The Atlantic Monthly,” “Harper’s 
Magazine,” “The New York Independent,” “Times,” and “Tribune,” to several 
California journals, and to at least two English periodicals. She was one of the 
first women to become a newspaper correspondent, and her letters from Washington 
inaugurated a new feature in journalism. She has published a number of books: 
“Greenwood Leaves;” “History of My Pets;” “Poems;” “Recollections of My 
Childhood;” “Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe;” “Merrie England;” 
“Stories from Many Lands;” “Victoria, Queen of England,” and others. 

Mrs. Lippincott has lived abroad a great deal, and has been made welcome in 
the best literary circles in England and on the continent. During the war she 
devoted herself to the cause of the soldiers, read and lectured to them in camjis 
and hospitals, and won the appreciation of President Lincoln, who used to speak 
of her as “Grace Greenwood, the Patriot.” Although devoted to her home in 
Washington, she has spent much time in New York City, and has lived a life 
whose activity and service to the public are almost unequalled among literary 
women. 

■ — - 




THE BABY IN THE BATH-TUB * 
(from “records of five years,” 1867 .) 


NNIE! Sophie! come up quick, and see 
baby in her bath-tub ! ” cries a charming 
little maiden, running down the wide stair¬ 


way of an old country house, and half-way up the 
long hall, all in a fluttering cloud of pink lawn, her 
soft dimpled cheeks tinged with the same lovely morn- 


■* Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

386 































SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT. 


387 


ing hue. In an instant there is a stir and a gush of 
light laughter in the drawing-room, and presently, 
with a movement a little more majestic and elder-sis¬ 
terly, Annie and Sophie float noiselessly through the 
hall and up the soft-carpeted ascent, as though borne 
on their respective clouds of blue and white drapery, 
and take their way to the nursery, where a novel en¬ 
tertainment awaits them. It is the first morning: of 
the eldest married sister s first visit home, with her 
first baby ; and the first baby, having slept late after 
its journey, is about to take its first bath in the old 
house. 

“ Well, I declare, if here isn’t mother, forgetting 
her dairy, and Cousin Nellie, too, who must have left 
poor Ned all to himself in the garden, lonely and dis¬ 
consolate, and I am torn from my books, and Sophie 
from her flowers, and all for the sake of seeing a nine- 
month-old baby kicking about in a bath-tub ! What 
simpletons we are ! ” 

Thus Miss Annie, the proude layde of the family ; 
handsome, haughty, with perilous proclivities toward 
grand socialistic theories, transcendentalism, and gen¬ 
eral strong-mindedness ; pledged by many a saucy vow 
to a life of single dignity and freedom, given to 
studies artistic, aesthetic, philosophic and ethical; a 
student of Plato, an absorber of Emerson, an exalter 
of her sex, a contemner of its natural enemies. 

“Simpletons, are we?” cries pretty Elinor Lee, 
aunt of the baby on the other side, and “ Cousin 
Nellie” by love’s courtesy, now kneeling close by the 
bath-tub, and receiving on her sunny braids a liberal 
baptism from the pure, plashing hands of babyhood, 
—“ simpletons, indeed ! Did I not once see thee, 0 
Pallas-Athene, standing rapt before a copy of the 
‘ Crouching Venus ? ’ and this is a sight a thousand 
times more beautiful; for here we have color, action, 
radiant life, and such grace as the divinest sculptors 
of Greece were never able to entrance in marble. Just 
look at these white, dimpled shoulders, every dimple 
holding a tiny, sparkling drop,—these rosy, plashing 
feet and hands,—this laughing, roguish face,—these 
eyes, bright and blue and deep as lakes of fairy-land, 
—these ears, like dainty sea-shells,—these locks of 
gold, dripping diamonds,—and tell me what cherub 
of Titian, what Cupid of Greuze, was ever half so 
lovely. I say, too, that Raphael himself would have 
jumped at the chance of painting Louise, as she sits 


there, towel in hand, in all the serene pride and chas¬ 
tened dignity of young maternity,—of painting her as 
Madonna .” 

“ Why, Cousin Nellie is getting poetical for once, 
over a baby in a bath-tub ! ” 

“ Well, Sophie, isn’t it a subject to inspire real 
poets, to call out and yet humble the genius of 
painters and sculptors ? Isn’t it an object for the 
reverence of ‘ a glorious human creature,’—such a 
pure and perfect form of physical life, such a starry 
little soul, fresh from the hands of God ? If your 
Plato teaches otherwise, Cousin Annie, I’m glad I’ve 
no acquaintance with that distinguished heathen gen¬ 
tleman ; if your Carlyle, with his ‘ soul above buttons’ 
and babies, would growl, and your Emerson smile icily 
at the sight, away with them ! ” 

“ Why, Nellie, you goose, Carlyle is ‘ a man and a 
brother,’ in spite of his ‘ Latter-day Pamphlets,’ and 
no ogre. I believe he is very well disposed toward 
babies in general; while Emerson is as tender as he is 
great. Have you forgotten his ‘ Threnody,’ in which 
the sob of a mortal’s sorrow rises and swells into an 
immortal’s pean ? I see that baby is very lovely; I 
think that Louise may well be proud of her. It’s a pity 
that she must grow up into conventionalities and all 
that,—perhaps become some man’s plaything, or 
slave.” 

“ 0 don't, 4 sister !—‘ sufficient for the day is the 
worriment thereof.’ But I think you and Nellie are 
mistaken about the pride. I am conscious of no such 
feeling in regard to my little Florence, but only of 
joy, gratitude, infinite tenderness, and solicitude.” 

Thus the young mother,—for the first time speak¬ 
ing, but not turning her eyes from the bath-tub. 

“ Ah, coz, it won’t go ! Young mothers are the 
proudest of living creatures. The sweetest and saint- 
liest among you have a sort of subdued exultation, a 
meek assumption, an adorable insolence, toward the 
whole unmarried and childless world. I have never 
seen anything like it elsewhere.” 

“/ have, in a bantam Biddy, parading her first 
brood in the hen-yard, or a youthful duck, leading her 
first little downy flock to the water.” 

“Ha, blasphemer! are you there?” cries Miss 
Nellie, with a bright smile, and a brighter blush. 
Blasphemer’s other name is a tolerably good one,— 
Edward Norton,—though he is oftenest called “ Our 



388 


SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT. 


Ned.” He is the sole male representative of a wealthy 
old New England family,—the pride and darling of 
four pretty sisters, “ the only son of his mother, and 
she a widow,” who adores him,—“ a likely youth, just 
twenty-one,” handsome, brilliant, and standing six feet 
high in his stockings. Yet, in spite of all these un¬ 
favorable circumstances, he is a very good sort of a 
fellow. lie is just home from the model college of 
the Commonwealth, where he learned to smoke, and, 
I blush to sav, has a cigar in hand at this moment, 
just as he has been summoned from the garden by 
his pet sister, Kate, half-wild with delight and excite¬ 
ment. With him comes a brother, according to the 
law, and after the spirit,—a young, slender, fair-haired 
man, but with an indescribable something of paternal 
importance about him. He is the other proprietor 
of baby, and steps forward with a laugh and a “ Heh, 
my little water-nymph, my Iris ! ” and by the bath-tub 
kneeling, catches a moist kiss from smiling baby lips, 
and a sudden wilting shower on shirt-front and collar, 
from moister baby hands. 

Young collegian pauses on the threshold, essaying 
to look lofty and sarcastic, for a moment. Then his 
eye rests on Nellie Lee's blushing face, on the red, 
smiling lips, the braids of gold, sprinkled with shining 
drops,—meets those sweet, shy eyes, and a sudden, 
mysterious feeling, soft and vague and tender, floods 
his gay young heart. He looks at baby again. “ ’Tis 
a pretty sight, upon my word! Let me throw away 
my cigar before I come nearer; it is incense too pro¬ 


fane for such pure rites. Now give me a peep at 
Dian-the less! How the little witch revels in the 
water ! A small Undine. Jolly, isn’t it, baby ? Why, 
Louise, I did not know that Floy was so lovely, such 
a perfect little creature. How fair she is ? Why, 
her flesh, where it is not rosy, is of the pure, trans¬ 
lucent whiteness of a water-lily.” 

No response to this tribute, for baby has been in 
the water more than long enough, and must be taken 
out, willy, nilly. Decidedly nilly it proves; baby 
proceeds to demonstrate that she is not altogether 
cherubic, by kicking and screaming lustily, and strik¬ 
ing out frantically with her little, dripping hands. 
But Madonna wraps her in soft linen, rolls her and 
pats her, till she grows good and merry again, and 
laughs through her pretty tears. 

But the brief storm has been enough to clear the 
nursery of all save grandmamma and Auntie Kate, 
who draw nearer to witness the process of drying and 
dressing. Tenderly the mother rubs the dainty, soft 
skin, till every dimple gives up its last hidden drop¬ 
let ; therf, with many a kiss, and smile, and coo, she 
robes the little form in fairy-like garments of cambric, 
lace, flannel, soft as a moth’s wing, and delicate em¬ 
broidery. The small, restless feet are caught, and 
encased in comical little hose, and shod with Titania’s 
own slippers. Then the light golden locks are brushed 
and twined into tendril-like curls, and lo ! the beauti¬ 
ful labor of love is finished. Baby is bathed and 
dressed for the day. 











+ Tte'VW- •%: 





HORATIO ALGER. 


S a writer of books at once entertaining and at the same time of a 
healthy and earnest character a parent cannot recommend to his boys 
a more wholesome author than Horatio Alger, Jr. Mr. Alger 

O 7 O 

always writes with a careful regard to truth and to the right princi¬ 
ples. His heroes captivate the imagination, but they do not inflame 
it, and they are generally worthy examples for the emulation of boys. 
At the same time he is in no sense a preacher. His books have the true juvenile 
flavor and charm, and, like the sugar pills of the homoeopathist, carry the good medi¬ 
cine of morality, bravery, industry, enterprise, honor—everything that goes to make 
up the true manly and noble character, so subtly woven into the thread of his inter¬ 
esting narrative that the writer without detecting its presence receives the whole¬ 
some benefit. 

Mr. Alger became famous in the publication of that undying book, “ Ragged 
Dick ; or, Street Life in New York.” It was his first book for young people, and its 
success was so great that he immediately devoted himself to writing for young 
people, which he has since continued. It was a new field for a writer when Mr. 
Alger began, and his treatment of it at once caught the fancy of the boys. 
“Ragged Dick” first appeared in 1868, and since then it has been selling steadily 
until now it is estimated that over two hundred thousand copies of the series have 
passed into circulation. Mr. Alger possesses in an eminent degree that sympathy 
with boys which a writer must have to meet with success. He is able to enter into 
their plans, hopes, and aspirations. He knows how to look upon life as they do. 
He writes straight at them as one from their ranks and not down upon them as a 
towering fatherly adviser. A boy’s heart naturally opens to a writer who under¬ 
stands him and makes a companion of him. This, we believe, accounts for the 
enormous sale of the books of this writer. We are told that about three-quarters of a 
million copies of his books have been sold and that all the large circulating libraries 
in the country have several complete sets of them, of which but few volumes are 
found on the shelves at one time. 

Horatio Alger, Jr., was born in Revere, Massachusetts, January 13, 1884. 
He graduated at Harvard University in 1852, after which he spent several years in 
teaching and newspaper work. In 1864 he was ordained as a Unitarian minister 
and served a Massachusetts church for two years. It was in 1866 that he took up 
his residence in New York and became deeply interested in the street boys and 
exerted what influence he could to the bettering of their condition. His experience 
in this work furnished him with the information out of which grew many of his 
later writings. 



389 


























390 


HORATIO ALGER. 


To enumerate the various volumes published by this author would be tedious. 
They have generally been issued in series. Several volumes complete one subject 
or theme. His first published book was “Bertha’s Christmas Vision” (1855). 
Succeeding this came “Nothing to Ho,” a tilt at our best society, in verse (1857); 
“Frank’s Campaign; or, What a Boy Can Ho” (1864); “Helen Ford,” a novel, 
and also a volume of poems (1866). The “ Bagged Hick” series began in 1868. 
and comprises six volumes. Succeeding this came “Tattered Tom,” first and 
second series, comprising eight volumes. The entire fourteen volumes above 
referred to are devoted to New York street life of boys. “ Bagged Hick ” has served 
as a model for many a poor boy struggling upward, while the influence of Phil the 
fiddler in the “ Tattered Tom ” series is credited with having had much to do in 
the abolishment of the 'padrone system. The “ Campaign Series ” comprised three 
volumes; the “Luck and Pluck Series” eight; the “ Brave and Bold” four; the 
“ Pacific Series ” four; the “ Atlantic Series ” four; “ Way to Success” four; the 
“New World” three; the “ Victory Series ” three. All of these were published 
prior to 1896. Since the beginning of 1896 have appeared “Frank Hunter’s Peril,” 
“ The Young Salesman ” and other later works, all of which have met with the 
usual cordial reception accorded by the boys and girls to the books of this favorite 
author. It is perhaps but just to say, now that Oliver Optic is gone, that Mr. 
Alger has attained distinction as the most popular writer of books for boys in 
America, and perhaps no other writer for the young has ever stimulated and 
encouraged earnest boys in their efforts to rise in the world or so strengthened their 
will to persevere in well-doing, and at the same time written stories so real that 
every one, young and old, delights to read them. He not only writes interesting 
and even thrilling stories, but what is of very great importance, they are always 
clean and healthy. 

- »o«- 



(from 

AKE up, there, youngster,” said a rough 
voice. 

Ragged Dick opened his eyes slowly and 


stared stupidly in the face of the speaker, but did not 
offer to get up. 

“ Wake up, you young vagabond ! ” said the man a 
little impatiently ; “ I suppose you’d lay there all day 
if I hadn’t called you.” 

“ What time is it ?” asked Dick. 

Seven o’clock.” 

“ Seven o’clock ! I oughter’ve been up an hour 
ago. I know what ’twas made me so precious sleepy. 
I went to the Old Bowery last night and didn’t turn 
in till past twelve.” 

“ You went to the Old Bowery ? Where’d you get 
your money ? ” asked the man, who was a porter in 
the employ of a firm doing business on Spruce Street. 


HOW DICK BEGAN THE DAY* 

“ RAGGED DICK ; OR, STREET LIFE IN NEW YORK.”) 

“ Made it on shines, in course. My guardian don’t 
allow me no money for theatres, so I have to earn it.” 

“ Some boys get it easier than that,” said the 
porter, significantly. 

“You don’t catch me stealing, if that’s what you 
mean,” said Dick. 

“ Don’t you ever steal, then ?” 

“ No, and I wouldn't. Lots of boys does it, hut I 
wouldn’t.” 

“ Well, I’m glad to hear you say that. I believe 
there’s some good in you, Dick, after all.” 

“ Oh, I’m a rough customer,” said Dick. “ But I 
wouldn’t steal. It’s mean.” 

“ I’m glad you think so, Dick,” and the rough voice 
sounded gentler than at first. “ Have you got any 
money to buy your breakfast ? ” 

“ No ; but I’ll soon have some.” 


* Copyright, Porter & Coates. 









HORATIO ALGER. 


391 


While this conversation had been going on Dick 
had got up. His bed-chamber had been a wooden 
box, half full of straw, on which the young boot- 
black had reposed his weary limbs and slept as soundly 
as if it had been a bed of down. He dumped down 
into the straw without taking the trouble of undress¬ 
ing. Getting up, too, was an equally short process. 
He jumped out of the box, shook himself, picked out 
one or two straws that had found their way into rents 
in his clothes, and, drawing a well-worn cap over hig 
uncombed locks, he was all ready for the business of 
the day. 

Dick’s appearance, as he stood beside the box, was 
rather peculiar. His pants were torn in several 
places, and had apparently belonged in the first in¬ 
stance to a boy two sizes larger than himself. He 
wore a vest, all the buttons of which were gone ex¬ 
cept two, out of which peeped a shirt which looked as 
if it had been worn a month. To complete his costume 
he wore a coat too long for him, dating back, if one 
might judge from its general appearance, to a remote 
antiquity. 

Washing the hands and face is usually considered 
proper in commencing the day ; but Dick was above 
such refinement. He had no particular dislike to 
dirt, and did not think it necessary to remove several 
dark streaks on his face and hands. But in spite of 
his dirt and rags there was something about Dick that 
was attractive. It was easy to see that if he had 
been clean and well-dressed he would have been de¬ 
cidedly good-looking. Some of his companions were 
sly, and their faces inspired distrust; but Dick had a 
straightforward manner that made him a favorite. 

Dick’s business hours had commenced. He had no 

« 

office to open. His little blacking-box was ready for 
use, and he looked sharply in the faces of all who 
passed, addressing each with, “ Shine your boots, sir?” 

“ How much ? ” asked a gentleman on his way to 
his office. 

“ Ten cents,” said Dick, dropping his box, and 
sinking upon his knees on the sidewalk, flourishing his 
brush with the air of one skilled in his profession. 

“ Ten cents ! Isn’t that a little steep ? ” 


“ Well, you know ’taint all clear profit,” said Dick, 
who had already set to work. “ There’s the blacking 
costs something, and I have to get a new brush pretty 
often.” 

“ And you have a large rent, too,” said the gentle¬ 
man, quizzically, with a glance at a large hole in 
Dick’s coat. 

“ Yes, sir,” said Dick, always ready for a joke; “ I 
have to pay such a big rent for my manshun up on 
Fifth Avenue that I can’t afford to take less than ten 
cents a shine. I’ll give you a bully shine, sir.” 

“ Be quick about it then, for I am in a hurry. So 
your house is on Fifth Avenue, is it? ” 

“ It isn’t anywhere else,” said Dick, and Dick spoke 
the truth there. 

“ What tailor do you patronize ?” asked the gentle¬ 
man, surveying Dick’s attire. 

“ Would you like to go to the same one ? ” asked 
Dick, shrewdly. 

“ Well, no ; it strikes me that he didn’t give you a 
very good fit.” 

“ This coat once belonged to General Washington,” 
said Dick, comically. “ He wore it all through the 
Revolution, and it got tore some, ’cause he fit so 
hard. When he died he told his widder to give it to 
some smart young fellow that hadn’t got none of his 
own : so she gave it to me. But if you’d like it, sir, 
to remember General Washington by, I’ll let you have 
it reasonable.” 

“ Thank you, but I wouldn’t like to deprive you of 
it. And did your pants come from General Wash¬ 
ington, too ? ” 

“ No, they was a gift from Lewis Napoleon. Lewis 
had outgrown ’em and sent ’em to me; he’s bigger 
than me, and that’s why they don’t fit. 

“ It seems you have distinguished friends. Now, 
my lad, I suppose you would like your money.” 

“ I shouldn’t have any objection,” said Dick. 

And now, having fairly introduced Ragged Dick to 
my young readers, I must refer them to the next 
chapter for his further adventures. 




EDWARD S. ELLIS. 

WRITER OF POPULAR BOOKS FOR BOYS. 

DWARD S. ELLIS is one of the most successful of the large group of 
men and women who have made it their principal business to provide 
delightful books for our young people. 

Mr. Ellis is a native of northern Ohio, born in 1840, but has 
lived most of his life in New Jersey. At the age of seventeen, he 
began his successful career as a teacher and was attached for some 
years to the State Normal School of New Jersey, and was Trustee and Superintend¬ 
ent of the schools in the city of Trenton. He received the degree of A. M. from 
Princeton University on account of the high character of his historical text-books ; 
but he is most widely known as a writer of books for boys. Of these, he has 
written about thirty and continues to issue two new ones each year, all of which are 
republished in London. His contributions to children’s papers are so highly 
esteemed that the “ Little Folks’ Magazine,” of London, pays him double the rates 
given to any other contributor. Mr. Ellis’s School Histories have been widely used 
as text-books and he has also written two books on Arithmetic. He is now prepar¬ 
ing “ The Standard History of the United States.” 

Besides those already mentioned, the titles of which would make too long a list 
to be inserted here, he has written a great many miscellaneous books. 

Mr. Ellis abounds in good nature and is a delightful companion, and finds in 
his home at Englewood, New Jersey, all that is necessary to the enjoyment of life. 



THE SIGNAL FIRE * 


(FROM “ STORM MOUNTAIN.”) 



ALBOT FROST paused on the crest of 
Storm Mountain and looked across the 
lonely Oakland Valley spread out before 


him. 

He had traveled a clean hundred miles through the 
forest, swimming rapid streams, dodging Indians and 
Tories, and ever on the alert for his enemies, who 
were equally vigilant in their search for him. 


He eluded them all, however, for Frost, grim and 
grizzled, was a veteran backwoodsman who had been 
a border scout for a score of years or more, and he 
knew all the tricks of the cunning Iroquois, whose 
ambition was to destroy every white person that could 
be reached with rifle, knife, or tomahawk. 

Frost had been engaged on many duties for the 
leading American officers, but he was sure that to-day 


* Copyright, Porter k Coates. 

392 































EDWARD S. ELLIS. 


393 


was the most important of all; for be it known that 
he carried, hidden in the heel of his shoe, a message 
in cipher from General George Washington himself. 

Frost had been promised one hundred dollars in 
gold by the immortal leader of the American armies, 
if he would place the piece of cipher writing in the 
hands of Colonel Nick Hawley, before the evening of 
the tenth day of August, 1777. 

To-day was the tenth, the afternoon was only half 
gone, and Fort Defiance, with its small garrison under 
the command of Hawley, was only a mile distant in 
Oakland Valley. The vale spread away for many 
leagues to the right and left, and was a couple of miles 
wide at the point where the small border settlement 
was planted, with its stockade fort and its dozen 
families clustered near. 

“ Thar’s a good three hours of sunlight left,” mut¬ 
tered the veteran, squinting one eye toward the sultry 
August sky, “ and I orter tramp to the fort and back 
agin in half that time. I'll be thar purty quick, if 
none of the varmints trip me up, but afore leavin’ this 
crest, I’d like to cotch the signal fire of young Roslyn 
from over yender.” 

General Washington considered the message to 
Colonel Hawley so important that he had sent it in 
duplicate; that is to say, two messengers concealed 
the cipher about their persons and set out by widely 
different routes to Fort Defiance, in Oakland Valley. 

Since the distance was about the same, and it was 
not expected that there would be much variation in 
speed, it was believed that, barring accidents, the two 
would arrive in sight of their destination within a 
short time of each other. 

The other messenger was Elmer Roslyn, a youth 
of seventeen, a native of Oakland, absent with his 
father in the Continental Army, those two being the 
only members of their family who escaped an Indian 
massacre that had burst upon the lovely settlement 
some months before. 

It was agreed that whoever first reached the moun¬ 
tain crest should signal to the other by means of a 
small fire—large enough merely to send up a slight 
vapor that would show against the blue sky beyond. 

The keen eyes of Talbot Frost roved along the 
rugged mountain-ridge a couple of miles distant, in 
search of the tell-tale signal. They followed the 
craggy crest a long distance to the north and south of 


the point where Roslyn had promised to appear, but 
the clear summer air was unsustained by the least 
semblance of smoke or vapor. The day itself was of 
unusual brilliancy, not the least speck of a cloud be¬ 
ing visible in the tinted sky. 

I hat Elmer Roslyn is a powerful pert younsr chap,” 
said the border scout to himself. “ I don’t think I 
ever seed his ekal, and he can fight in battles jes’ like 
his father, Captain Mart, that I’ve heerd Gineral 
Washington say was one of the best officers he’s got; 
but thar’s no sense in his puttin’ himself agin an old 
campaignor like me. I don’t s’pose he’s within 
twenty mile of Oakland yit, and he won’t have a 
chance to kindle that ere signal fire afore to-morrer. 
So I’ll start mine, and in case he should accidentally 
reach the mountain-top over yender afore sundown, 
why he’ll see what a foolish younker he was to butt 
agin me.” 

Talbot Frost knew that despite the perils through 
which he had forced his way to this spot, the greatest 
danger, in all probability, lay in the brief space separ¬ 
ating him from Fort Defiance in the middle of the 
valley. 

It was necessary, therefore, to use great care lest 
the signal fire should attract the attention of un- 
friendly eyes. 

“ I’ll start a small one,” he said, beginning to 
gather some dry twigs, “just enough for Elmer to 
obsarve by sarchin’—by the great Gineral Wash¬ 
ington ! ” 

To explain this exclamation of the old scout, I must 
tell you that before applying the flint and tinder to 
the crumpled leaves, Talbot Frost glanced across the 
opposite mountain-crest, two miles away. 

As he*did so he detected a fine, wavy column of 
smoke climbing from the rocks and trees. It was so 
faint that it was not likely to attract notice, unless a 
suspicious eye happened to look toward that part of 
the sky. 

“ By gracious ! It’s him ! ” he exclaimed, closing 
his mouth and resuming command of himself. “ That 
ere young Roslyn is pearter than I thought; if he 
keeps on at this rate by the time he reaches my years 
he’ll be the ekal of me— almost. Wall, I’ll have to 
answer him; when we meet I’ll explanify that 
I give him up, and didn’t think it was wuth while to 
start a blaze.” 




MARTHA FINLEY. 

THE GIRLS’ FRIEND. 

I 

ARTHA FINLEY, author of the “ Elsie Books,” etc., amounting in all 
to about one hundred volumes, was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, April 
26, 1828, in the house of her grandfather, Major Samuel Finley, 
of the Virginia Cavalry, in the War of the Revolution, and a per¬ 
sonal friend of Washington, who, while President, appointed him 
“Collector of Public Monies” for the Northwestern Territory of 
which Ohio was then a part. In the war of 1812-14 Major Finley marched to 
Detroit to the assistance of General Hull, at the head of a regiment of Ohio 
volunteers in which his eldest son, James Brown Finley, then a lad of eighteen, was 
a lieutenant. On Hull's disgraceful surrender those troops were paroled and 
returned to their homes in Ohio. James Finley afterwards became a physician and 
married his mother’s niece, Maria Theresa Brown. Martha was their sixth child. 
In the spring of 1836 Dr. Finley left Ohio for South Bend, Indiana, where he 
resided until his death in 1851. 

Something more than a year later Martha joined a widowed sister in New York 
city and resided there with her for about eighteen months. It was then and there 
she began her literary career by writing a newspaper story and a little Sunday- 
school book. But she was broken down in health and half blind from astigmatism ; 
so bad a case that the oculist who years afterward measured her eyes for glasses, told 
her she would have been excusable had she said she could not do anything at all. 
But she loved books and would manage to read and write in spite of the difficulty 
of so doing; and a great difficulty it was, for in the midst of a long sentence the 
letters would seem to be thrown into confusion, and it was necessary to look away 
from the book or close her eyes for an instant before they would resume their proper 
positions. 

But orphaned and dependent upon her own exertions, she struggled on, teach¬ 
ing and writing, living sometimes in Philadelphia with a stepmother who was kind 
enough to give her a home, sometimes in Phoenixville, Pa., where she taught a 
little select school. It was there she began the Elsie Series which have proved her 
most successful venture in literature. The twenty-second volume, published in 
1897, is entitled Elsie at Home. The author has again and again proposed to end 
the series, thinking it long enough, but public and publishers have insisted upon 
another and yet another volume. The books have sold so well that they have made 





























































MARTHA FINLEY. 


395 


her a lovely home in Elkton, Maryland, whither she removed in 1876 and still 
resides, and to yield her a comfortable income. 

But her works are not all juveniles. “Wanted a Pedigree,” and most of the 
other works in the Finley Series are for adults, and though not so very popular as 
the Elsie Books, still have steady sales though nearly all have been on the market 
for more than twenty years. 

• 0 «- 

ELSIE’S DISAPPOINTMENT.* 

(FROM “ ELSIE DINSMORE.”) 


HE school-room at Roselands was a very 
pleasant apartment. Within sat Miss Day 
with her pupils, six in number. 

“ Young ladies and gentlemen,” said she, looking at 
her watch, “ I shall leave you to your studies for an 
hour ; at the end of which time I shall return to hear 
your recitations, when those who have attended 
properly to their duties will be permitted to ride out 
with me to visit the fair.” 

“ Oh ! that will be jolly ! ” exclaimed Arthur, a 
bright-eyed, mischief-loving boy of ten. 

“Hush!” said Miss Day sternly; “let me hear 
no more such exclamations ; and remember that you 
will not go unless your lessons are thoroughly learned. 
Louise and Lora,” addressing two young girls of the 
respective ages of twelve and fourteen, “ that French 
exercise must be perfect, and your English lessons as 
well. Elsie,” to a little girl of eight, sitting alone at 
a desk near one of the windows, and bending'over a 
slate with an appearance of great industry, “ every 
figure of that example must be correct, your geography 
lesson recited perfectly, and a page in your copy-book 
written without a blot.” 

“ Yes, ma’am,” said the child meekly, raising a pair 
of large soft eyes of the darkest hazel for an instant 
to her teacher’s face, and then dropping them again 
upon her slate. 

“ And see that none of you leave the room until I 
return,” continued the governess. “Walter, if you 
miss one word of that spelling, you will have to stay 
at home and learn it over.” 

“ Unless mamma interferes, as she will be pretty 
sure to do,” muttered Arthur, as the door closed on 
Miss Day, and her retreating footsteps were heard 
passing down the hall. 

For about ten minutes after her departure, all was 


quiet in the school-room, each seemingly completely 
absorbed in study. But at the end of that time 
Arthur sprang up, and, flinging his book across the 
room, exclaimed, “ There ! I know my lesson ; and if 
I didn’t, I shouldn’t study another bit for old Day, or 
Night either.” 

“ Do be quiet, Arthur,” said his sister Louise; “ I 
can’t study in such a racket.” 

Arthur stole on tiptoe across the room, and com¬ 
ing up behind Elsie, tickled the back of her neck 
with a feather. 

She started, saying in a pleading tone, “Please, 
Arthur, don’t.” 

“ It pleases me to do,” he said, repeating the ex¬ 
periment. 

Elsie changed her position, saying in the same 
gentle, persuasive tone, “ 0 Arthur! please let me 
alone, or I never shall be able to do this example.” 

“ What! all this time on one example ! you ought 
to be ashamed. Why, I could have done it half a 
dozen times over.” 

“ I have been over and over it,” replied the little 
girl in a tone of despondency, “ and still there are two 
figures that will not come right.” 

“ How do you know they are not right, little puss ? ” 
shaking her curls as he spoke. 

“ Oh ! please, Arthur, don’t pull my hair. I have 
the answer—that’s the way I know.” 

Well, then, why don’t you just set the figures 
down. I would.” 

“ Oh ! no, indeed ; that would not be honest.” 

“ Pooh ! nonsense ! nobody would be the wiser, nor 
the poorer.” 

“ No, but it would be just like telling a lie. But I 
can never get it right while you are bothering me so,” 
said Elsie, laying her slate aside in despair. Then, 



Copyright, 1893, Dodd, Mead & Co. 








396 


MARTHA FINLEY. 


taking out her geography, she began studying most 
diligently. But Arthur continued his persecutions— 
tickling her, pulling her hair, twitching the book out 
of her hand, and talking almost incessantly, making 
remarks, and asking questions ; till at last Elsie said, 
as if just ready to cry, “ Indeed, Arthur, if you don’t 
let me alone, I shall never be able to get my lessons.” 

“ Go away, then; take your book out on the ve¬ 
randa, and learn your lessons there,” said Louise. 
“ I’ll call-you when Miss Day comes.” 

“ Oh ! no, Louise, I cannot do that, because it 
would be disobedience,” replied Elsie, taking out her 
writing materials. 

Arthur stood over her criticising every letter she 
made, and finally jogged her elbow in such a way as 
to cause her to drop all the ink in her pen upon the 
paper, making quite a large blot. 

“ Oh !” cried the little girl, bursting into tears, 
“ now I shall lose my ride, for Miss Day will not let 
me go ; and I was so anxious to see all those beauti¬ 
ful flowers.” 

Arthur, who was really not very vicious, felt some 
compunction when he saw the mischief he had done. 
“ Never mind, Elsie,” said he, “ I can fix it yet. Just 
let me tear out this page, and you can begin again on 
the next, and I’ll not bother you. I'll make these 
two figures come right, too,” he added, taking up her 
slate. 

“ Thank you, Arthur,” said the little girl, smiling 
through her tears; “ you are very kind, but it would 
not be honest to do either, and I had rather stay at 
home than be deceitful.” 

“ Very well, miss,” said he, tossing his head, and 
walking away, “ since you won't let me help you, it 
is all your own fault if you have to stay at home.” 

Elsie finished her page, and, excepting the unfortu¬ 
nate blot, it all looked very neat indeed, showing plainly 
that it had been written with great care. She then 
took up her slate and patiently went over and over 
every figure of the troublesome example, trying to 
discover where her mistake had been. But much 
time had been lost through Arthur’s teasing, and her 
mind was so disturbed by the accident to her writing 
that she tried in vain to fix it upon the business in 
hand ; and before the two troublesome figures had been 
made right, the hour was past and Miss Day returned. 

“ Oh ! ” thought Elsie, “ if she will only hear the 


others first; ” but it was a vain hope. Miss Day had 
no sooner seated herself at her desk than she called, 
“ Elsie, come here and say that lesson ; and bring 
your copy-book and slate, that I may examine your 
work.” 

Elsie tremblingly obeyed. 

The lesson, though a difficult one, was very tolera¬ 
bly recited ; for Elsie, knowing Arthur’s propensity 
for teasing, had studied it in her own room before 
school hours. But Miss Day handed back the books 
with a frown, saying, “ I told you the recitation must 
be perfect, and it was not. There are two incorrect 
figures in this example,” said she, laying down the 
slate, after glancing over its contents. Then taking 
up the copy-book, she exclaimed, “ Careless, diso¬ 
bedient child ! did I not caution you to be careful not 
to blot your book ? There will be no ride for you this 
morning. You have failed in everything. Go to your 
seat. Make that example right, and do the next; 
learn your geography lesson over, and write another 
page in your copy-book ; and mind, if there is a blot 
on it, you will get no dinner.” 

Weeping and sobbing, Elsie took up her books and 
obeyed. 

During this scene Arthur stood at his desk pretend¬ 
ing to study, but glancing every now and then at 
Elsie, with a conscience evidently ill at ease. She 
cast an imploring glance at him, as she returned to 
her seat; but he turned away his head, muttering, 
“ It’s all her own fault, for she wouldn’t let me help 
her.” 

As he looked up again, he caught his sister Lora’s 
eyes fixed on him with an expression of scorn and 
contempt. He colored violently, and dropped his 
upon his book. 

“ Miss Day,” said Lora, indignantly, “I see Arthur 
does not mean to speak, and as I cannot bear to see 
such injustice, I must tell you that it is all his fault 
that Elsie has failed in her lessons ; for she tried her 
very best, but he teased her incessantly, and also 
jogged her elbow and made her spill the ink on her 
book ; and to her credit she was too honorable to tear 
out the leaf from her copy-book, or to let him make 
her example right; both which he very generously 
proposed doing after causing all the mischief.” 

“ Is this so, Arthur ? ” asked Miss Day, angrily. 

The boy hung his head, but made no reply. 





MARTHA FINLEY. 


397 


“ Very well, then,” said Miss Day, “ you too must 
stay at home.” 

“ Surely,” said Lora, in surprise, “ you will not 
keep Elsie, since I have shown you that she was not 
to blame.” 

“ Miss Lora,” replied her teacher, haughtily, “ I 
wish you to understand that I am not to be dictated 
to by my pupils.” 

Lora bit her lip, but said nothing, and Miss Day 
went on hearing the lessons without further remark. 

In the meantime the little Elsie sat at her desk, 
striving to conquer the feelings of anger and indigna¬ 
tion that were swelling in her breast; for Elsie, 
though she possessed much of “ the ornament of a 
meek and quiet spirit,” was not yet perfect, and often 
had a fierce contest with her naturally quick temper. 
Yet it was seldom, very seldom that word or tone or 
look betrayed the existence of such feelings; and it 
was a common remark in the family that Elsie had 
no spirit. 

The recitations were scarcely finished when the 
door opened and a lady entered dressed for a ride. 

“ Not through yet, Miss Day ?” she asked. 

“Yes, madam, we are just done,” replied the 
teacher, closing the French grammar and handing it 
to Louise. 

“ Well, I hope your pupils have all done their duty 
this morning, and are ready to accompany us to the 
fair,” said Mrs. Dinsmore. “ But what is the matter 
with Elsie ? ” 

“ She has failed in all her exercises, and therefore 
has been told that she must remain at home,” replied 
Miss Day with heightened color and in a tone of 


anger; “ and as Miss Lora tells me that Master 
Arthur was partly the cause, I have forbidden him 
also to accompany us.” 

“ Excuse me, Miss Day, for correcting you,” said 
Lora, a little indignantly; “ but I did not say partly , 
for I am sure it was entirely his fault.” 

“ Hush, hush, Lora,” said her mother, a little im¬ 
patiently ; “ how can you be sure of any such thing; 
Miss Day, I must beg of you to excuse Arthur this 
once, for I have quite set my heart on taking him 
along. He is fond of mischief, I know, but he is 
only a child, and you must not be too hard upon 
him.” 

“ Very well, madam,” replied the governess stiffly, 
“ you have of course the best right to control your 
own children.” 

Mrs. Dinsmore turned to leave the room. 

“ Mamma,” asked Lora, “is not Elsie to be allowed 
to go too ? ” 

“ Elsie is not my child, and I have nothing to say 
about it. Miss Day, who knows all the circum¬ 
stances, is much better able than I to judge whether 
or no she is deserving of punishment,” replied Mrs. 
Dinsmore, sailing out of the room. 

“ You will let her go, Miss Day ?” said Lora, in¬ 
quiringly. 

“ Miss Lora,” replied Miss Day, angrily, “ I have 
already told you I was not to be dictated to. I have 
said Elsie must remain at home, and I shall not break 
my word.” 

“ Such injustice ! ” muttered Lora, turning away. 

Miss Day hastily quitted the room, followed by 
Louise and Lora, and Elsie was left alone. 




tiiii 


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MARY MAPES DODGE, 

EDITOR OF “ ST. NICHOLAS ” MAGAZINE. 

would be difficult to name a writer of later years who lias done more 
to delight the children with bright and chatty sunny-day stories 
than this estimable woman. While her mind lias all the maturity, 
power, good judgment and strength of our best writers, her heart 
seems never to have grown out of the happy realm of childhood. It 
is for them that she thinks, and it is for them that she writes her 
charming stories when she is in her happiest moods. Not that she cannot write for 
grown up people, for she has given them several books—very good ones too. She 
edited “ Hearth and Home ” at one time, and many a mother remembers her good 
advice in bright and cheerful editorials, on the art of home-making, and on 
the care and training of children. She is also a humorous writer of considerable 
ability. “ Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question ” is one of her most amusing 
sketches. Mary Mapes was born in New York city, in 1838. Prof. James Mapes, 
the scientist, was her father. She married Mr. William Dodge, a lawyer, who lived 
only a few years, and it was after his death that she began to write for the “ Hearth 
and Home ” to which Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel) and Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe were at that time, also, contributors. 

In 1864 Mrs. Dodge’s first volume entitled, “ Irving Stories,” for children, 
appeared. It met with great success, and in 1865 she issued her second volume, 
“ Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates,” a charming story for boys and girls. The 
scene was laid in Holland. The book was so popular that it was translated into 
French, German, Dutch, Russian and other languages and became a little classic. 
She wrote a number of other books, among which are “A Few Friends, and How 
They Amused Themselves” (1869); “Rhymes and Jingles” (1874); “Theophilus 
and Others; ” “ Along the Way,” a volume of poems, and “ Donald and Dorothy.” 

In 1873 the “St. Nicholas” Magazine for young folks was commenced and Mrs. 
Dodge was made its editor, which position she still retains in 1897, and its popu¬ 
larity and brightness have given her a permanent place in the hearts of the boys 
and girls for the last quarter century. 

Mrs. Dodge has long been a leader in the literary and artistic circles in New 
York, where she has a pleasant home. She had two fine boys of her own and it is 
said her first stories were written for their amusement. One of her sons died in 
1881. The other, a successful inventor and manufacturer, lives in Philadelphia. 

398 
























































MARY MAPES DODGE. 


399 



UST as Donald and Dorothy were about to 
end the outdoor visit to the Danbys, de¬ 
scribed in our last chapter, Coachman 
was seen in a neighboring field, trying to 


Jack 

catch Mr. Reed’s spirited mare, “ Lady,” that had 
been let out to have a run. He had already ap¬ 
proached her without difficulty and slipped a bridle 
over her head, but she had started away from him, 
and he, feeling that she had been allowed playtime 
enough, was now bent on recapturing her. 

Instantly a dozen Danby eyes were watching them 
with intense interest. Then Donald and Ben, not 
being able to resist the impulse, scampered over to join 
in the race, closely followed by Dan and Fandy. Greg¬ 
ory, too, would have gone, but Charity called him back. 

It was a superb sight to see the spirited animal, 
one moment standing motionless at a safe distance 
from Jack, and the next, leaping about the field, 
mane and tail flying, and every action telling of a de¬ 
fiant enjoyment of freedom. Soon, two grazing horses 
in the same field caught her spirit; even Don’s pony, 
at first looking soberly over a hedge in the adjoining 
lot, began frisking and capering about on his own 
account, dashing past an opening in the hedge as 
though it were as solid a barrier as the rest. Nor 
were Jack and the boys less frisky. Coaxing and 
shouting had failed, and now it was an open chase, 
in which, for a time, the mare certainly had the ad¬ 
vantage. But what animal is proof against its appe¬ 
tite? Clever little Fandy had rushed to Mr. Reed’s 
barn, and brought back in his hat a light lunch of 
oats for the mare, which he at once bore into her 
presence, shaking it temptingly, at the same time 
slowly backing away from her. The little midget and 
his hatful succeeded, where big man and boys had 
failed. The mare came cautiously up and was about 
to put her nose into the cap, when Jack’s stealthy 
and sudden effort to seize the bridle made her start 
sidewise away from him. But here Donald leaped 
forward at the other side, and caught her before she 
had time to escape again. 

Jack was too proud of Don’s quickness to appear 
surprised; so, disregarding the hilarious shout of the 
Danby boys, he took the bridle from the young master 


TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING* 

(FROM “ DONALD AND DOROTHY.”) 

with an off-hand air, and led the now gentle animal 
quietly towards the stable. 

But Dorothy was there before him. Out of breath 
after her brisk run, she was panting and tugging at a 
dusty side-saddle hanging in the harness-room, when 
Jack and the mare drew near. 

“Oh, Jack!” she cried, “help me to get this 
down! I mean to have some fun. I’m going to 
ride that mare back to the field! ” 

“ Not you, Miss Dorry ! ” exclaimed Jack. “ Take 
your own pony, an’ your own saddle, an’ it’s a go; 
but this ere mare’d be on her beam ends with you in 
no time. 

“ Oh, no, she wouldn’t, Jack! She knows me per¬ 
fectly. Don’t you, Lady? Oh, do, Jack! That’s a 
good Jack. Please let me ! Don’s there, you know.” 

Dorry said this as if Don were a regiment. By 
this time, the side-saddle, yielding to her vigorous 
efforts, had clattered down from its peg, with a pecu¬ 
liar buckle-and-leathery noise of its own. 

Won’t you, Jack ? Ah, wont you ? ” 

No, miss, I won’t! ” said Jack, resolutely. 

“ Why, Jack, I’ve been on her before. Don’t you 
know ? There isn’t a horse on the place that could 
throw me. Uncle said so. Don’t you remember? ” 
“ So he did ! ” said Jack, his eyes sparkling proudly. 
“ The Capt’n said them very words. An’,” glancing 
weakly at the mare, “ she’s standin ’ now like a skiff 
in a calm. Not a breath in her sails—” 

“ Oh, do—c7o, Jack!” coaxed Dorry, seizing her 
advantage, “ quick ! They’re all in the lot yet. Here, 
put it on her ! ” 

“ I’m an old fool,” muttered Jack to himself, as, 
hindered by Dorry’s busy touches, he proceeded to 
saddle the subdued animal; “ but I can’t never re¬ 
fuse her nothin’—that’s where it is. Easy now, miss! ” 
as Dorry, climbing up on the feed-box in laughing 
excitement, begged him to hurry and let her mount. 
“ Easy now. There! You’re on, high and dry. 
Here” (tugging at the girth), “let me tauten up a 
bit! Steady now! Don’t try no capers with her, 
Miss Dorry, and come back in a minute. Get up, 
Lady !—get up ! ” 

The mare left the stable so slowly and unwillingly, 


u 


u 


* Copyright, Mary Mapes Dodge. 






400 


MARY MAPES DODGE. 


that Jack slapped her flank gently as she moved off. 
Jog jog went Lady out through the wide stable 
doorway, across the yard into the open field. Dorry, 
hastily arranging her skirts and settling herself com¬ 
fortably upon the grand but dingy saddle (it had been 
Aunt Kate’s in the days gone by), laughed to herself, 
thinking how astonished they all must be to see her 
riding Lady back to them. For a moment she play¬ 
fully pretended to be unconscious of their gaze. Then 
she looked up. 

Poor Dorry! Not a boy, not even Donald, had 
remained in the field ! He and the little Danbys 
were listening to one of Ben’s stories of adventure. 
Even the two horses and Don’s pony were quietly 
nosing the dry grass in search of green tufts. 

“ I don’t care,” she murmured gayly, overcoming 
her disappointment. “ I mean to have a ride, any 
way. Get up, Lady ! ” 

Lady did get up. She shook her head, pricked 
up her ears, and started off at a beautiful canter 
across the fields. 

“ How lovely ! ” thought Dorry, especially pleased 
at that moment to see several figures coming toward 
her from the Danby yard ; “ it’s just like flying ! ” 

Whether Lady missed her master’s firm grip upon 
the rein, or whether she guessed her rider’s thought, 
and was inspired by the sudden shouts and hurrahs 
of the approaching boys, can never be known. Cer¬ 
tain it is that by the next moment Dorry, on Lady’s 
back, was flying in earnest,—flying at great speed 
round and round the field, but with never an idea of 
falling off. Her first feeling was that her uncle and 
Jack wouldn’t be pleased if they knew the exact 
character of the ride. Next came a sense of triumph, 
because she felt that Don and the rest were seeing it 
all, and then a wild consciousness that her hat was 
off, her hair streaming to the wind, and that she was 
keeping her seat for dear life. 

Lady's canter had become a run, and the run soon 
grew into a series of leaps. Still Dorry kept her 
seat. Young as she was, she was a fearless rider, 
and at first, as we have seen, rather enjoyed the pros¬ 
pect of a tussle with Lady. But as the speed in¬ 
creased, Dorry found herself growing deaf, dumb and 
blind in the breathless race. Still, if she could only 
hold on, all would be well; she certainly could not 
consent to be conquered before “ those boys.” 


Lady seemed to go twenty feet in the air at every 
leap. There was no merry shouting now. The little 
boys stood pale and breathless. Ben, trying to hold 
Don back, was wondering what was to be done, and 
Charity was wringing her hands. 

“ Oh, oh ! She’ll be thrown ! ” cried the girls. 

“ Not a bit of it! ” insisted Donald. “ I’ve seen 
Dot on a horse before.” But his looks betrayed his 
anxiety. “ See ! the mare’s trying to throw her now ! 
But she can’t do it—she can’t do it! Dot under¬ 
stands herself, I tell you,—Whoa-o !—Let me go ! ” 
and, breaking from Ben, he tore across the field, 
through the opening in the hedge, and was on his 
pony’s back in a twinkling. How he did it, he never 
knew. He had heard Dorry scream, and somehow 
that scream made him and his pony one. Together, 
they flew over the field ; with a steady, calm purpose, 
they cut across Lady’s course, and soon were at her 
side. Donald’s “ Hold on, Dot! ” was followed by 
his quick plunge toward the mare. It seemed that 
she certainly would ride over him, but he never 
faltered. Grasping his pony’s mane with one hand, 
he clutched Lady’s bridle with the other. The mare 
plunged, but the boy’s grip was as firm as iron. 
Though almost dragged from his seat, he held on, and 
the more she struggled, the harder he tugged,—the 
pony bearing itself nobly, and quivering in eager 
smypathy with Donald’s every movement. Jack and 
Ben were now tearing across the field, bent on rescue ; 
but they were not needed. Don was master of the 
situation. The mare, her frolic over, had yielded 
with superb grace, almost as if with a bow, and the 
pony was rubbing its nose against her steaming 
side. 

“ Good for you. Dot! ” was Donald’s first word. 
“ You held on magnificently.” 

Dorothy stroked Lady’s hot neck, and for a mo- 

/ 

ment could not trust herself to look up. But when 
Jack half-pulled, half-lifted her from the saddle, and 
she felt the firm earth beneath her, she tottered and 
would have fallen, had not Donald, frightened at her 
white face, sprung to the ground just in time to sup¬ 
port her. 

“ Shiver my timbers ! ” growled Jack, “ if ever I 
let youngsters have their way again ! ” But his eyes 
shone with a strange mixture of self-reproach and 
satisfaction as he looked at Dorry. 










































f 














. 













HORACE GREELEY. 


MURAT HALSTEAD. 


ALBERT SHAW. 



LYMAN ABBOTT. 


CHAS. A. DANA. 


HENRY W. WATTERSON. 



WHITELAW REID. JULIAN HAWTHORNE. RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. 

NOTED AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS. 











HORACE GREELEY, 

THE FOUNDER OF MODERN JOURNALISM. 

E men of whom we love to read are those who stand for some great 
principle, whose lives and deeds exemplify its power. When we 
think of patriotism, the figure of Washington rises before us, as the 
man whose life, above all others, was controlled by pure love- of 
country. Practical wisdom, shrewdness, and thrift are embodied in 
Benjamin Franklin. Astor and Girard represent the power of 
accumulation; Stewart, Carnegie, and Pullman, the power of organization; and so, 
when we consider the power of the press, the image which comes up before our 
mental view is that of Horace Greeley. In almost every personal quality there 
have been men who far surpassed him,—men who were greater as politicians, as 
organizers, as statesmen, as speakers, as writers,—but in the one respect of influenc¬ 
ing public opinion through the press, of “ making his mind the mind of other men,” 
no man in America has ever wielded such power as the great editor and founder of 
the New York “ Tribune.” 

Horace Greeley was one of the poor country boys who have afterward become the 
bone and sinew of the Republic. He was born in Amherst, New Hampshire, in 
1811. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a struggling farmer. He moved to Ver¬ 
mont in 1821, and a few years later to the western part of Pennsylvania. Horace 
was a precocious child ; and his mother, Mary Woodburn, who was of Scotch-Irish 
stock, used to recite to him ballads and stories, so that he really acquired a taste for 
literature before the age at which many children conquer the alphabet. 

In his fifteenth year Horace felt that he could endure farming no longer, and at 
last procured from his father a reluctant consent that he should definitely seek 
employment as a printer. He found the longed-for opportunity at East Poultney, 
Vermont, in the office of the “ Northern Spectator.” 

In 1830, before Horace’s apprenticeship ended, the “Spectator” collapsed, and he 
was again set adrift. Plis father had removed to Western Pennsylvania, and the 
boy turned his face in that direction. After working for a few months on different 
country papers, he resolved to try his fortune in New York, and went to that city in 
August, 1831. 

After two years of labor as a printer, so arduous that during much of the time it 
extended to fourteen hours a day, Mr. Greeley commenced his first editorial work 
upon a weekly paper called the “ New Yorker” of which he was part owner and 
which lasted until March, 1841, when it Went under, with a credit on its books of 
26 401 




































402 


HORACE GREELEY. 


$10,000 due to Mr. Greeley for editing the paper, all of whicn was sunk with the 
wreck. 

In the famous campaign of 1840, when Harrison was “ sung and shouted into the 
presidential chair,” Greeley started a small weekly called the “ Log Cabin.” He 
threw all his spirit and energy into it; he made it lively, crisp, and cheap. It 
attained an almost unheard-of success, reaching editions of eighty and ninety thou¬ 
sand. It was continued for several months after the triumphant election of Har¬ 
rison, and then merged into the New York “Tribune,” which Greeley started at this 
time, the first issue appearing April 10, 1841. 

The new enterprise soon became successful. It was helped at the start by a bitter 
attack from the “ Sun,” then in the hands of Moses Y. Beach. The defense and 
rejoinders were equally pungent and amusing. Mr. Greeley always throve best 
upon opposition. His spicy retorts, and especially his partisan enthusiasm, forced 
the attention of the public, and the subscription-list of the “Tribune” soon rose from 
hundreds to thousands ; by the third week in May it had 10,000 names on its books. 

One thing in particular gave the “Tribune” eminence ; that was Greeley’s policy of 
employing as contributors the best writers of the time. To name all the able men 
and women who thus won fame for both themselves and the “Tribune,” would make a 
list too long to print; but among them may be mentioned Bayard Taylor, whose 
“Views Afoot” first appeared in the form of letters to the “ Tribune; ” Margaret 
Fuller, whose articles gave her a wide reputation ; George Ripley, Moncnre D. 
Conway, Sydney Howard Gay, and George W. Smalley; and for years Thomas 
Hughes, the popular author of “ Tom Brown at Oxford,” sent frequent and able 
letters from London. The result of this liberal policy was to make the “ Tribune” 
indispensable to people of intelligence, even though utterly opjDOsed to its political 
views. 

In 1848 Mr. Greeley was elected to Congress, but his strength was as a journalist, 
not as a legislator. At the close of his brief term he retired from Congress, and 
during the stormy decade preceding the Civil War he made the “Tribune” a mighty 
power. He warmly espoused the cause of freedom, and denounced the Fugitive 
Slave Law, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and the endless aggressions of the slave power 
with a vigor and pertinacity which made him one of the best-hated men in America. 
His course was not always consistent; and he often brought upon his head the 
wrath of friends as well as enemies. Moreover, in the conduct of a great daily paper 
much must be left to the judgment of subordinates ; and all their mistakes were, of 
course, laid to the charge of their chief. Many of the old readers of the “Tribune” 
supposed that every line in the paper was actually written by Horace Greeley. He 
rarely took the trouble to justify or explain ; and, therefore, while in one sense one 
of the best-known men in the country, he was one of the most misunderstood. Mr. 
Greeley had no time or thought for personal explanations; he was bent upon saving 
the country,—individuals could take care of themselves. 

During the war Mr. Greeley’s course was somewhat erratic and unstable, but he 
kept a hold upon a large class of readers who believed in him, to w 7 hom he was a 
mental and moral lawgiver, who refused to believe any evil of him; and, if some 
visitor to the city—for a large proportion of “ Tribune ” readers were country, and par¬ 
ticularly Western, people—on coming back, reported that in an interview with Mr. 


HORACE GREELEY. 


403 


Greeley the editor had indulged in unlimited profanity, the unlucky individual was 
incontinently discredited and voted a calumniator. 

In the years following the war, Greeley’s pen was more busy than ever. Beside 
his editorial writing in the “ Tribune,” he prepared the second volume of his war 
history, “ The American Conflict,” and his delightful autobiography, “ Recollec¬ 
tions of a Busy Life.” He was always intensely interested in the growth of the 
West, where he had made a memorable tour in 1859, extending to Salt Lake City; 
and now he unceasingly advocated western emigration. His terse advice, “ Go 
West, young man, and grow up with the country,” became a sort of national watch¬ 
word, and many thousands of Eastern people resolved to turn their faces toward the 
empire of the West. 

In 1872 a curious political combination was made. Probably such a surprise 
was never sprung upon the country as the nomination of Horace Greeley for the 
Presidency, by a convention of “ Liberal Republicans ” and bolting Democrats. 
That he should be defeated at the polls was inevitable. He worked hard through 
the canvass, traveling and addressing meetings; body and mind suffered from the 
fatigue and excitement. To add to his troubles, Mrs. Greeley, who had been out of 
health for a considerable time, died at this period; his health gave way ; he became 
unable to sleep ; and sleeplessness was followed by inflammation of the brain, which 
soon ended his life. 

Horace Greeley sleeps in Greenwood Cemetery, Long Island, on a hill overlooking 
the beautiful bay of New York, and within sight of the great city where his busy 
life was spent. 


A DEBTOR’S SLAVERY. 

(FROM “ RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.”) 


HE New Yorker was issued under my super¬ 
vision, its editorials written, its selections 
made for the most part by me, for seven 
years and a half from March 22, 1834. Though 
not calculated to enlist partisanship, or excite enthus¬ 
iasm, it was at length extensively liked and read. 
It began with scarcely a dozen subscribers; these 
steadily increased to 9,000 ; and it might under better 
business management (perhaps I should add, at a 
more favorable time), have proved profitable and 
permanent. That it did not was mainly owing to 
these circumstances : 1. It was not extensively adver¬ 
tised at the start, and at least annually thereafter, as 
it should have been. 2. It was never really pub¬ 
lished, though it had half-a-dozen nominal publishers 
in succession. 3. It was sent to subscribers on credit, 
and a large share of them never paid for it, and 
never will, while the cost of collecting from others 
ate up the proceeds. 4. The machinery of railroads, 


expresses, news companies, news offices, etc., whereby 
literary periodicals are now mainly disseminated, did 
not then exist. I believe that just such a paper 
issued to-day, properly published and advertised, 
would obtain a circulation of 100,000 in less time 
than was required to give the New Yorker scarcely 
a tithe of that aggregate, and would make money 
for its owners, instead of nearly starving them, as 
mine did. I was worth at least $1,500 when it 
was started; I worked hard and lived frugally 
throughout its existence ; it subsisted for the first two 
years on the profits of our job-work ; when I, deem¬ 
ing it established, dissolved with my partner, he 
taking the jobbing business and I the New Yorker , 
which held its own pretty fairly thenceforth till the 
commercial revulsion of 1837 swept over the land, 
whelming it and me in the general ruin. 

I had married in 1836, deeming myself worth 
$5,000, and the master of a business which would 











404 


HORACE GREELEY. 


thenceforth yield me for my labor at least $1,000 per 
annum; but, instead of that, or of any income at 
all, I found myself obliged throughout 1837 to con¬ 
front a net loss of about $100 per week—my income 
averaging $100, and my inevitable expenses $200. 
It was in vain that I appealed to delinquents to pay 
up; many of them migrated; some died; others 
were so considerate as to order the paper stopped, but 
very few of these paid; and I struggled on against a 
steadily rising tide of adversity that might have 
appalled a stouter heart. Often did I call on this or 
that friend with intent to solicit a small loan to meet 
some demand that could no longer be postponed nor 
evaded, and, after wasting a precious hour, leave him, 
utterly unable to broach the loathsome topic. I have 
borrowed $500 of a broker late on Saturday, and 
paid him $5 for the use of it till Monday morning, 
when I somehow contrived to return it. Most gladly 
would I have terminated the struggle by a surrender ; 
but, if I had failed to pay my notes continually fall¬ 
ing due, I must have paid money for my weekly sup¬ 
ply of paper—so that would have availed nothing. 
To have stopped my journal (for I could not give it 
away) would have left me in debt, beside my notes 
for paper, from fifty cents to two dollars each, to at 
least three thousand subscribers who had paid in ad¬ 
vance ; and that is the worst kind of bankruptcy. 
If anyone would have taken my business and debts 
off my hands, upon my giving him my note for 
$2,000, I would have jumped at the chance, and 
tried to work out the debt by setting type, if nothing 
better offered. If it be suggested that my whole 
indebtedness was at no time more than $5,000 to 
$7,000, I have only to say that even $1,000 of debt 
is ruin to him who keenly feels his obligation to fulfil 
every engagement yet is utterly without the means 
of so doing, and who finds himself dragged each 
week a little deeper into hopeless insolvency. To be 
hungry, ragged, and penniless is not pleasant; but 
this is nothing to the horrors of bankruptcy. All 
the wealth of the Rothschilds would be a poor rec¬ 
ompense for a five years’ struggle with the conscious¬ 
ness that you had taken the money or property of 


trusting friends—promising to return or pay for it 
when required—and had betrayed this confidence 
through insolvency. 

I dwell on this point, for I would deter others from 
entering that place of torment. Half the young men 
in the country, with many old enough to know better, 
would “go into business”—that is, into debt—to¬ 
morrow, if they could. Most poor men are so ignor¬ 
ant as to envy the merchant or manufacturer whose 
life is an incessant struggle with pecuniary difficulties, 
who is driven to constant “shinning,” and who, fromjj 
month to month, barely evades that insolvency which 
sooner or later overtakes most men in business ; so 


that it has been computed that but one in twenty of 




them achieve a pecuniary success. For my own 






part—and I speak from sad experience—I would 
rather be a convict in a State prison, a slave in a rice 
swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow 
of debt. 

Let no young man misjudge himself unfortunate, 
or truly poor, so long as he has the full use of his 
limbs and faculties, and is substantially free from 
debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, sus¬ 
picion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is 
infinitely worse than them all. And, if it had pleased 
God to spare either or all of my sons to be the sup¬ 
port and solace of my declining years, the lesson 
which I should have most earnestly sought to impress 
upon them is—“ Never run into debt! Avoid pecu¬ 
niary obligation as you would pestilence or famine. 
If you have but fifty cents, and can get no more for 
a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it, and live on it, 


rather than owe any man a dollar ! ” Of course I 
know that some men must do business that involves 


risks, and must often give notes and other obligations, 
and I do not consider him really in debt who can lay 
his hands directly on the means of paying, at some 
little sacrifice, all that he owes ; I speak of real debt 
—which involves risk or sacrifice on the one side, 
obligation and dependence on the other—and I say, 
from all such, let every youth humbly pray God to 
preserve him evermore. 











HORACE GREELEY. 


405 


THE PRESS. 


H ONG slumbered the world in the darkness 
And ignorance brooded o’er earth like a 

' pail; 

To the sceptre and crown men abased them in terror, 
Though galling the bondage, and bitter the thrall; 
When a voice, like the earthquake’s, revealed the 
dishonor— 

A flash, like the lightning’s, unsealed every eye, 
And o’er hill-top and glen floated liberty’s banner, 
While round it men gathered to conquer or die I 

’Twas the voice of the Press, on the startled ear 
breaking, 

In giant-born prowess, like Pallas of old; 

’Twas the flash of intelligence, gloriously waking 
A glow on the cheek of the noble and bold; 

And tyranny’s minions, o’erawed and affrighted, 
Sought a lasting retreat from its powerful control, 
And the chains which bound nations in ages 
benighted, 

Were cast to the haunts of the bat and the mole. 
Then hail to the Press ! chosen guardian of Freedom ! 


Strong sword-arm of justice ! bright sunbeam of 
truth; 

We pledge to her cause (and she has but to need 
them), 

The strength of our manhood, the fire of our 
youth; 

Should despots e’er dare to impede her free soaring, 
Or bigot to fetter her flight with his chain, 

We pledge that the earth shall close o’er our 
deploring, 

Or view her in gladness and freedom again 

But no !—to the day-dawn of knowledge and glory, 
A far brighter noontide-refulgence succeeds , 

And our art shall embalm, through all ages, in story, 
Her champion who triumphs—her martyr who 
bleeds, 

x\nd proudly her sons shall recall their devotion, 
While millions shall listen to honor and bless, 

Till there bursts a response from the heart’s strong 
emotion, 

And the earth echoes deep with “ Long Life to 
the Press! ” 











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CHARLES A. DANA. 


THE FAMOUS EDITOR OF THE “SUN.” 



HE man who with Greeley made the New York “ Tribune ” one of 
the greatest powers in the land, and who, from 1868 to 1897, was 
the chief and managing editor of the New York “Sun,” is certainly 
entitled to rank among our foremost men. Charles A. Dana lived a 
remarkable life, a life of strenuous effort and of continuous and 
notable achievement. He was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, 
in 1819, but his early life was passed at the village of Gaines, in Western New 
York, in Buffalo, and at Guildhall, Vermont. One of his earliest recollections was 
of being tied to a post with his mother’s garter because he had run away and gotten 
himself very muddy, thus displaying, at three years old, the restless spirit of enter¬ 
prise which did much to make him the man he was. When he was eleven years 
old he returned to Buffalo to be a clerk in his uncle’s dry goods store. He was 
very successful as a salesman, and remained in the establishment until the failure 
of the business, in 1837, when he determined to prepare himself for college. He 
said that he found the elements of Latin very hard and disagreeable work, and he 
had the greatest difficulty in remembering the paradigms. Two winter terms at a 
country school, in his early boyhood, and two years at Harvard completed Mr. 
Dana’s systematic education, as too close application affected his eyesight, and he 
was obliged to withdraw from college at the end of his sophomore year. He had 
cultivated such a taste for languages, however, that no year since passed which he 
did not devote in part to serious study, and he became master of most spoken lan¬ 
guages except the Slavonic and Oriental, and he began, at the age of seventy-five, 
the study of Russian. Harvard College afterward conferred upon him the degree 
which he was prevented from earning in the regular way, and is proud to count him 
among her most honored sons. 

After leaving college Mr. Dana joined that remarkable body of men and women 
who conducted the Brook Farm experiment. He distinguished himself as one of 
the very few practical men among that band of philosophers, and gained, while at 
Brook Farm, a little experience in the newspaper business in conducting a publi¬ 
cation known as “ The Harbinger,” which was the organ of the association. 

In 1844 his eyes had sufficiently recovered to enable him to do regular work, 
and he obtained employment under Elizur Wright, better known as an insurance 
actuary than as an editor, but who then conducted “The Chronotype,” an orthodox 
newspaper, which was a great favorite with the Congregational ministers of New 













































CHARLES A. DANA. 


407 


England. Mr. Wright used to enjoy telling how “Dana always had a weakness 
for giving people with fixed convictions something new to think about,” and how 
he illustrated this weakness during the absence of his chief by writing strong edi¬ 
torials against the doctrine of a bill. This piece of enterprise involved the editor- 
in-chief in the labor of writing a personal letter to each of his ministerial sub¬ 
scribers, and to many others explaining how the paper “had been left in charge of 
a young man without mellow journalistic experience.” Mr. Dana’s compensation 
was five dollars per week, and at this amount it remained until 1847, when he 
joined the staff of the New York “Tribune” at ten dollars, a figure which was 
gradually increased to fifty dollars, which was the highest salary he ever received 
on the “Tribune.” Many delightful stories are told of the intercourse of Dana 
and Greeley. The part they took in politics, the fight against slavery, the organi¬ 
zation of the Republican Party, Mr. Dana’s loyal support of Greeley’s aspirations 
for political preferment, all these are a part of the political history of our country. 
Just before joining the “Tribune” staff Mr. Dana was married to Miss Eunice 
MacDaniel, of New York. • Of his delight in family life no testimony can be 
stronger than his own words written during a brief interval of leisure: “I have 
been busy with my children, drawing them about in old Bradley’s one-horse wagon, 
rowing and sailing with them on the bay and sound, gathering shells on the shore 
with them, picking cherries, lounging on the grass with the whole tribe about me. 
There’s no delight like that in a pack of young children of your own. ... A 
house without a baby is inhuman.” 

During these busy years Mr. Dana, together with Mr. Ripley, edited “The 
American Cyclopedia,” a work which is a monument of his care and learning and 
patient labor; and he also prepared and published a “Household Book of Poetry,” 
one of the very best collections of its kind, and one which has found its way into a 
verv large number of American homes and contributed in no small measure to 
further the cause of good literature. In 1862 there came about a radical difference 
between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana as to the proper policy of the “Tribune” in 
regard to the war. The result was Mr. Dana’s withdrawal from the paper. He 
was immediately asked by Mr. Stanton to audit a large number of disputed claims 
in the quartermaster’s office at Cairo. This led to his appointment as Assistant 
Secretary of War, which position he held until the end of the Rebellion. About 
one-third of his time during this period was spent with the armies at the front. 
In this way he served as the confidential agent of the administration, and was once 
styled by Mr. Lincoln “the eyes of the Government at the front.” His reports 
were remarkable for their unconventional form, their brevity, and the completeness 
and accuracy with which they placed Stanton and Lincoln in possession of the 
exact facts. “Miles of customary military reports,” says a recent writer, “were 
worth less to Lincoln than half a dozen of Dana’s vivid sentences.” 

After the close of the war Mr. Dana spent one year in Chicago as editor of “The 
Republican.” He had been deceived about the financial basis of the enterprise, 
and was in no way responsible for its failure. Returning to New York, he organized 
the company which purchased the old “Sun” property, and started the paper on a 
long career of success and of influence. He was probably the most independent man 
who ever managed a great newspaper. He possessed the power of working without 




408 


CHARLES A. DANA. 


that conscious effort which characterizes the activity of most men, and which seems 
to be the source of so many early break-downs. He was not easily disturbed. At the 
“Sun” office, they like to tell a doubtful story of the old days when the work of 
the paper was "conducted in four small rooms. The city editor came hurriedly in 
exclaiming, “Mr. Dana, there’s a man out there with a cocked revolver. He is 
very much excited. He insists on seeing the editor-in-chief.” “Is he very much 
excited?” said Mr. Dana, hardly looking up from his work, “if you think it 
worth the space, ask Amos Cummings if he will kindly see the gentleman and 
write him up.” A noted sensational clergyman once volunteered to write, under an 
assumed name, for the “Sun.” He foolishly tried to adapt himself to what he 
imagined was the irresponsible tone of a Sunday paper, and there can be no doubt 
that Mr. Dana enjoyed writing in blue pencil across the back of his first article, 
“This is too wicked.” 

During the winter the great editor occupied his house on Madison Avenue and 
Sixtieth Street, but his summer house was on a little island, two or three miles from 
Glen Cove, which his wide knowledge of trees and fruits and flowers enabled him 
to make a singularly delightful spot. In the summer of 1897, when Mr. Dana was 
approaching his eightieth year, and still continued to manage his great newspaper, 
surrounded by a corps of trained and efficient men, he was attacked with a serious 
illness, and passed away on the afternoon of October 17tli. It is doubted whether 
any other man lias left his mark more deeply on the nineteenth century than has 
the famous editor of the “ Sun.” 

■ ♦<>• — 


ROSCOE CONKLING. 

(THE NEW YORK “ SUN,” APRIL 18, 1888.) 



HE most picturesque, striking, and original 
figure of American politics disappears in 


his friend. Then, his resentments were more lasting 
and more unchangeable than his friendships. This, 


the death of Roscoe Conkling. Alike in our judgment, was the great weakness of the man. 
powerful and graceful in person, he towered above Who can say that in his innermost heart Conkling 


the masses of men in the elasticity of his talents and 
the peculiarities and resources of his mental constitu¬ 
tion as much as he did in form and bearing. Yet 
his career cannot be called a great success, and he 
was not a great man. 

Rut he was an object of great love and admiration 
to an extraordinary circle of friends, including not 
alone those who shared his opinions, but many who 
were utterly opposed to them. lie was by nature a 
zealous partisan, and it was his inclination to doubt 
the good sense and the disinterestedness of those who 
were on the other side ; but, nevertheless, the strongest 
instinct of his nature was friendship, and his attach¬ 
ments stood the test of every trial except such as 
trenched upon his own personality. This he guarded 
with the swift jealousy of most intense selfhood, and 


did not deplore it ? At any rate, the candid observer 
who sums up his history must deplore it for him. 
“ And the recording angel, as he wrote it down, 
dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out for¬ 
ever.” 

For a long period Mr. Conkling was a great politi¬ 
cal power in New York and in the country. This 
was during the culmination of General Grant. 
Originally Conkling was not friendly to Grant, and 
when the latter appointed his first Cabinet, the Sena¬ 
tor’s condemnation was unreserved and stinging. 

o O 

This attitude was maintained during nearly the whole 
of Grant’s first year in the Presidency. At that 
time Senator Fenton stood near the President and 
dispensed the political bounty of the Administration. 
This Conkling could not endure, and when Congress 
no one could in any way impinge upon it and remain [met in December, 1869, he was full of war. But it 











CHARLES A. DANA. 


409 


soon got abroad that Fenton was a candidate for the 
Presidency. This settled the difficulty and brought 
the rival Senator into intimate relations with the 
President. This position he ever afterwards main¬ 
tained, and it formed the most successful and to 
him the most satisfactory portion of his life. When 
Grant was finally defeated at Chicago in 1880, and 
all hopes of his restoration to the White House was 
obliterated, the Senator soon abandoned the field of 
his renown, and went back to the disappointments 
and struggles of private life. 

As we have said, friendship was the greatest posi¬ 
tive force in Mr. Conkling’s character, and there 
never was any hesitation or any meanness in his 
bestowal of it. In this respect he was the most 
democratic of men. He was just as warmly devoted 
to persons holding low places in the social scale as to 
the great and powerful, and he was just as scrupu¬ 
lous in his observation of all the duties of a friend 
toward the one kind of people as toward the other. 
There was nothing snobbish about him. He would 
go as far and exert himself as greatly to serve a poor 
man who was his friend as to serve one who was rich 
and mighty. This disposition he carried into politics. 
He had very little esteem for office-giving as a politi¬ 
cal method ; but if a friend of his wanted a place, 
he would get it for him if he could. But no impor¬ 
tant politician in New York ever had fewer men ap¬ 
pointed on the ground that they were his friends or 
supporters. His intense and lofty pride could not 
thus debase itself. 

It is esteemed a high thing that with all the 
powers he wielded and the opportunities opened to 
him under a President the least scrupulous ever 
known in our history as regards jobbery and corrup¬ 
tion, Mr. Conkling never pocketed a copper of in¬ 
decent and dishonorable gain in the course of his 
public life. It is a high thing, indeed, and his bit¬ 
terest enemies cannot diminish the lustre of the fact. 
The practice of public robbery was universal. Thiev¬ 
ery was rampant everywhere in the precincts of the 
Administration. The Secretary of the Navy plun¬ 
dered millions. The Secretary of War sold public 
places and put the swag in his pocket. The Secretary 
of the Interior was forced by universal indignation to 
resign his ill-used office. The private secretaries of 
the President dealt in whiskey and defrauded the 


revenue. The vast gambling scheme of Black Friday 
had its fulcrum within the portals of the White 
House, and counted the President’s own family 
among its conspirators. It was a period of shame¬ 
less, ineffable, unblushing villainy pervading the high¬ 
est circles ot public power. And while all Republi¬ 
can statesmen, leaders, and journalists knew it, con¬ 
doned it, defended it even, the best they could, Mr. 
Conkling was the special spokesman, advocate, and 
orator of the Administration which was the creator of 
a situation so unprecedented and revolting. But 
while he thus lived and moved in the midst of cor¬ 
ruption, he was not touched by it himself. The pro¬ 
tector of brigands and scoundrels before the tribunal 
of public opinion, he had no personal part in their 
crimes and no share in their spoils. As the poet 
went through hell without a smutch upon his gar¬ 
ments, so the proud Senator, bent chiefly upon the 
endurance of the Republican party, came out of that 
epoch of public dishonesty as honest and as stainless 
as he entered it. 

In the records of the higher statesmanship it can 
be said that there is very much to the credit of Mr. 
Conkling’s account. As a parliamentary champion 
he had perhaps no superior; but others appear to 
have originated and perfected the measures to which 
in either House of Congress he gave the support of 
potent logic, fertile illustration, aggressive repartee, 
and scathing sarcasm. We do not recall a single one of 
the great and momentous acts of Congress which were 
passed in his time, of which he can certainly be pro¬ 
nounced the author. Yet his activity was prodigious, 
and it was a strange freak of his complicated charac¬ 
ter to bring before the House or Senate, through 
others, propositions which he thought essential. His 
hand could often be recognized in motions and reso¬ 
lutions offered on all sides of the chamber, and often 
by members with whom he was not known to be 
familiar. 

The courage of Mr. Conkling, moral as well as per¬ 
sonal, was of a heroic strain. After his mind was 
made up, he feared no odds, and he asked no favor. 
He dared to stand out against his own party, and he, 
a Republican, had the nerve to confront and defy the 
utmost power of a Republican administration. There 
was something magnanimous, too, in the way he 
bore misfortune. After the death of a distinguished 




410 


CHARLES A. DANA. 


man, with whom he had been very intimate, it was 
ascertained that his estate instead of being wealthy, 
was bankrupt. Mr. Conkling was an endorser of his 
notes for a large sum of money, and saying calmly, 

•4 

“ He would have done as much for me,” he set 
himself to the laborious task of earning the means to 
pay off the debt. He paid it in no long time, and 
we don’t believe that any man ever heard him mur¬ 
mur at the necessity. 

In social life Mr. Conkling endeared himself to his 
intimates, not only by the qualities which we have 
endeavored to describe and indicate, but by the rich¬ 
ness of his conversation, and the wit and humor— 
sometimes rather ponderous—with which it was 
seasoned, and by the stores of knowledge which he 
revealed. His reading had been extensive, especially 
in English literature, and his memory was surpris¬ 
ingly tenacious. Many of the most impressive pas¬ 
sages of oratory and of literature he could repeat 
by heart. He was fond of social discussion on all 
sorts of questions, and liked no one the less who 
courteously disagreed with him. 

As a lawyer, we suppose that his great ability was 
in cross-examination and with juries. The exigencies 
and the discussive usage of political life prevented 
that arduous, persevering application to pure law 
which is necessary to make a great jurist; but his 
intellectual powers were so vigorous and so accurate 


that he made up the deficiency of training and habh 
and no one can doubt that, if he had given himself 
to the law alone, he would have gained a position of 
the very highest distinction. As it was, the most 
eminent counsel always knew that he had a formid¬ 
able antagonist when Mr. Conkling was against him ; 
and every court listened to his arguments, not merely 
with respect, but with instruction. 

We shall be told, of course, that the supreme fault 
of this extraordinary mind was in perfection of judg¬ 
ment ; and when we consider how largely his actions 
were controlled by pride and passion, and especially 
by resentment, we must admit that the criticism is 
not wholly without foundation. There was also in his 
manner that which might justify the belief that often 
he was posing for effect, like an actor on the stage ; and 
we shall not dispute that so at times it may have 
been. But there are so few men who are entirely 
free from imperfection, and so many who inherit 
from their ancestors characteristics which ought to 
be disapproved, that we may well overlook them when 
they are combined with noble and admirable gifts. 
And after all has been said, even those whom he op¬ 
posed most strenuously, and scorned or resisted most 
unrelentingly, may remember that we are all human, 
while they let fall a tear and breathe a prayer to 
heaven as the bier of Boscoe Conkling passes on its 
way to the grave. 




LYMAN ABBOTT. 


PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, EDITOR OF “ THE OUTLOOK.” 



IDE sympathies and broad Christian charity are potent factors in the 
uplifting of men, and there have been many in America who have 
exhibited these characteristics, but few possess them to a greater 
degree than the present pastor of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, 
Lyman Abbott. He comes of good New England stock, and was 
born December 18, 1835, at Roxbury, Massachusetts. He is the 
third son of Jacob Abbott, so dear to the children of the past generation, as the 
author of those books which were the delight of the childhood of many still living 
—the “ Rollo Books,” the “ Jonas Books,” and the “ Lucy Books.” The plain, 
practical, broad common sense in Jacob Abbott, which dictated the composition of 
these attractive realistic stories, has been inherited in large measure by his son. 
Lyman Abbott was graduated from the University of the City of New York, in 
1853, then studied law and was admitted to the bar. He soon found that the 
ministry had greater attraction for him than the law, and after studying theology 
with his uncle, John S< C. Abbott, so well-known as the author of the “Life of 
Napoleon Bonaparte,” he was ordained in 1860, a minister of the Congregational 
Church. He went the same year to take charge of a congregation at Terre Haute, 
Indiana. After five years’ work he became discouraged, for there seemed to be 
little or no fruit from liis labors. He came to the conclusion that, after all, he had 
mistaken his calling, and so in 1865 he accepted the position of Secretary to the 
American Freedman’s Commission, an office which took him to New York. Return¬ 
ing to Terre Haute on a visit, he saw that his previous labors had not been in vain, 
but had brought forth abundant fruit in the lives of former members of his congre¬ 
gation. It was perhaps this fact that induced him to re-enter the ministry, and for 
three years to be the pastor of the New England Church in New York. He did 
not, however, lay aside the literary work he had taken up while connected with the 
Freedman’s Association. He conducted the “Literary Record” in “Harper’s 
Monthly,” and became editor of “The Illustrated Christian Weekly” in 1871. 
Resigning his connection with other papers he became joint editor with Henry 
Ward Beecher of the “ Christian Union ” in 1876, and its chief editor in 1881. 
After some years the name of the paper was changed to “ The Outlook,” as indicat¬ 
ing more nearly the character of the journal. In October, 1887, after the death of 
Henry Ward Beecher, he was chosen temporary Pastor of the Plymouth Church in 
Brooklyn, and later he was invited to remain permanently at the head of that large 

411 



































412 


LYMAM ABBOTT. 


congregation. He has written much, and has published a number of volumes, 
nearly all upon religious subjects, but his influence has been chiefly exerted through 
the pulpit, and especially through the columns of the “Christian Union ” and 
“ The Outlook,” one of the most ably conducted weeklies in the country. Popular 
in its presentation, trenchant in its comments upon contemporary men and events, 
clear and unmistakable in its position, few papers have a more decided influence 
upon their readers. Its tone is high, and its view of what is going on in the world 
is wide and comprehensive. All subjects are treated fearlessly and independently, 
and truth, purity, and earnestness in religion and politics are insisted upon. Not 
the least interesting columns of the paper are those devoted to “ Notes and Queries,” 
where, in a few well-chosen words, the difficulties of correspondents are answered, 
and at the same time valuable lessons are enforced. Lyman Abbott is one of the 
leaders of liberal Christian thought, is sympathetic with every movement for the 
advancement of mankind, a strong believer in practical Christianity, and a hater of 
all kinds of cant. 

As a speaker differing widely from his great predecessor in the Plymouth pulpit, 
Lyman Abbott’s success is due to the clearness with which he presents his subject, 
to his earnestness, and to his practical way of putting things. 

-KX- 


THE JESUITS* 

(from “dictionary of religious knowledge.”) 



ESUITS is the popular name of a Society 
more properly entitled “ The Society of 
Jesus”—of all the Religious Orders of 
the Roman Catholic Church the most important. 
The Society of Jesus was founded in 1554 by 
Ignatius Loyola. He was a Spanish cavalier; was 
wounded in battle; was by his wounds, which im¬ 
paired the use of one of his legs, deprived of his 
military ambition, and during his long confinement 
found employment and relief in reading a Life of 
Christ, and Lives of the Saints. This enkindled a 
new ambition for a life of. religious glory and religious 
conquest. He threw himself, with all the ardor of 
his old devotion, into his new life; carried his military 
spirit of austerity and self-devotion into his religious 
career; exchanged his rich dress for a beggar’s rags; 
lived upon alms ; practiced austerities which weakened 
his iron frame, but not his military spirit; and thus 
he prepared his mind for those diseased fancies which 
characterized this period of his extraordinay career. 

He possessed none of the intellectual requirements 
which seemed necessary for the new leadership which 
he proposed to himself. The age despised learning, 
and left it to the priests; and this Spanish cavalier, 


at the age of thirty-three, could do little more than 
read and write. He commenced at once, with 
enthusiasm, the acquisition of those elements of 
knowledge which are ordinarily acquired long before 
that age. He entered the lowest class of the College 
of Barcelona, where he was persecuted and derided 
by the rich ecclesiastics, to whose luxury his self- 
denial was a perpetual reproach. He fled at last 
from their machinations to Paris, where he continued 
his studies under more favorable auspices. Prominent 
among his associates here was Francis Xavier, a bril- 
liant scholar, who at first shrunk from the ill-educated 
soldier; yet gradually learned to admire his intense 
enthusiasm, and then to yield allegiance to it and its 
possessor. Several other Spaniards were drawn 
around the ascetic. At length, in 1534, Loyola, 
and five associates, in a subterranean chapel in Paris, 
pledged themselves to a religious life, and with solemn 
rites made sacred their mutual pledges to each other 
and to God. 

Loyola introduced into the new order of which he 
was the founder, the principle of absolute obedience 
which he had acquired in his military career. The 
name given to its chief was the military title of 


* Copyright, Harper & Bros. 









LYMAN ABBOTT. 


413 


“General.” The organization was not perfected, so 
as to receive the sanction of the Pope, until 1541. 
Its motto was Ad Majorera Dei Gloriam —“ To the 
greater Glory of God.” Its vows embraced not only 
the obligations of Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience, 
but also a pledge on the part of every member to go 
as missionary to any country which the Pope might 
designate. Loyola was himself the first General of 
the new Order. Its Constitution, due to him, is 
practically that of an Absolute Monarchy. The 
General is elected by a General Congregation, selected 
for the purpose by the whole body of professed mem¬ 
bers in the various Provinces. He holds his office for 
life. A Council of Assistants aid him, but he is not 
bound by their vote. lie may not alter the Consti¬ 
tution of the Society; and he is subject to deposition 
in certain contingencies; but no instance of the depo¬ 
sition of a General has ever occurred. Practically 
his will is absolute law, from which there is no 
appeal. 


The Jesuits are not distinguished by any particular 
dress or peculiar practices. They are permitted to 
mingle with the world, and to conform to its habits, 
if necessary for the attainment of their ends. Their 
widest influence has been exhibited in political circles, 
where, as laymen, they have attained the highest 
political positions without exciting any suspicion of 
their connection with the Society of Jesus; and in 
education they have been employed as teachers, in 
which position they have exercised an incalculable 

influence over the Church.It should 

be added that the enemies of the Order allege that, 
in addition to the public and avowed Constitution of 
the Society, there is a secret code, called Monita 
Secreta —“Secret Instructions”—which is reserved 
exclusively for the private guidance of the more 
advanced members. But as this Secret Code is 
disavowed by the Society—and since its authority is 
at least doubtful—it is not necessary to describe it 
here in detail. 


♦<> 


THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN* 

(from “old testament shadows.”) 


HE story of Sodom and Gomorrah epitomizes 
the Gospel. Every act in the great, the 
awful drama of life is here foreshadowed. 
The analogy is so perfect that we might almost be 
tempted to believe that the story is a prophetic 
allegory, did not nature itself witness its historic 
truthfulness. The fertile plain contained, imbedded in 
its own soil, the elements of its own destruction. There 
is reason to believe that this is true of this world on 
which we live. A few years ago an unusually bril¬ 
liant star was observed in a certain quarter of the 
heavens. At first it was thought to be a newly 
discovered sun; more careful examination resulted 
in a different hypothesis. Its evanescent character 
indicated combustion. Its brilliancy was marked for 
a few hours—a few nights at most—then it faded, 
and was gone. Astronomers believe that it was a 
burning world. Our own earth is a globe of living 
fire. Only a thin crust intervenes between us and 
this fearful interior. Ever and anon, in the rumbling 
earthquake, or the sublime volcano, it gives us warn¬ 
ing of its presence. These are themselves gospel 
messengers. They say if we would but hear them— 


“ Prepare to meet thy God.” The intimations of 
science confirm those of Revelation: “ The heavens 
and the earth. . . . are kept in store, reserved 
unto the fire against the Day of Judgment and perdi¬ 
tion of ungodly men.” What was true of Sodom 
and Gomorrah—what was true of the earth we live 
on—is true of the human soul. It contains within 
itself the instruments of its own punishment. There 
is a fearful significance in the words of the Apostle: 
“ After thy hardness and impenitent heart treasureth 
up to thyself wrath against the day of wrath.” Men 
gather, with their own hands, the fuel to feed the 
flame that is not quenched; they nurture in their 
own bosoms the worm that dieth not. In habits 
formed never to be broken; in words spoken, inca¬ 
pable of recall; in deeds committed, never to be 
forgotten ; in a life wasted and cast away that can 
never be made to bloom again, man prepares for 
himself his own deserved and inevitable chastisement. 
“ Son, remember ! ”—to the soul who has spent its 
all in riotous living, there can be no more awful 
condemnation. 



* Copyright, Harper & Bros. 
















HENRY WATTERSON. 


EDITOR OF THE LOUISVILLE “ COURIER-JOURNAL.’’ 



EW men connected with modern journalism have wider influence than 
Henry Watterson. He was born in Washington, D. C., in 1850, 
and because of defective eyesight, was educated chiefly by a private 
tutor. Entering journalism, at first in Washington and later in 
Tennessee, he made his reputation as editor of the “ Republican 
Banner,” in Nashville. He served in the Confederate Army in 
various capacities, being a staff officer at one time and Chief of Scouts in General 
Joseph E. Johnston’s army in 1864. After the war he returned to Nashville, but 
soon removed to Louisville, Kentucky, where he succeeded George E). Prentice as 
editor of the “ Journal.” In the following year he succeeded in uniting with the 
“ Journal,” the “ Courier ” and the “Times,” thus founding the “ Courier-Journal,” 
of which he has since been editor, and which, under his management, has come to 
be one of the foremost papers of the country. 

Mr. Watterson has taken a prominent part in politics, having been a member of 
every Presidential convention beginning with 1876. He was a personal friend and 
a resolute follower of Samuel J. Tilden. He has often appeared as a public speaker, 
particularly in political campaigns, and his judgment has had great weight in the 
councils of the Democratic party. Mr. Watterson is a pronounced “free-trader,” 
but has had no sympathy with the political movements under the leadership of 
Grover Cleveland. 

He has been a frequent contributor to periodicals and has edited one or two books, 
notably that entitled “ Oddities of Southern Life and Character.” The sustained 
vigor of his mind, the force of his personality and the wide-spread admiration for 
his abilities, make Mr. Watterson one of the leading men, not only of his party, but 
of the country. 


-♦o*- 


THE NEW SOUTH. 

(FROM “SPEECH AT THE NATIONAL BANKERS’ CONVENTION, LOUISVILLE, KY., OCTOBER 11, 1883.”) 

wish me to talk to you about the South. The South ! 
The South ! It is no problem at all. I thank God that 
at last we can say with truth, it is simply a geographic 
expression. The whole story of the South may be 
summoned up in a sentence : She was rich, and she 
414 


T was not, however, to hear of banks and 
bankers and banking that you did me the 
honor to call me before you. I am told that 
to-day you are considering that problem which has so 
disturbed the politicians—the South—and that you 






































HENRY WATTERSON. 


415 


lost her riches ; she was poor and in bondage ; she was 
set free, and she had to go to work ; she went to 
work, aud she is richer than ever before. You can 
see it was a groundhog case. The soil was here, the 
climate was here, but along with them was a curse, 
the curse of slavery. God passed the rod across the 
land and smote the people. Then, in His goodness 
and mercy, He waved the wand of enchantment, and 
lo, like a flower, His blessing burst forth ! Indeed, 
may the South say, as in the experience of men it is 
rare for any to say with perfect sincerity: 

“ Sweet are the uses of adversity.” 

The South never knew what independence meant 
until she was taught by subjection to subdue herself. 
She lived from hand to mouth. We had our debts 
and our niggers. Under the old system we paid our 
debts and walloped our niggers. Under the new we 
pay our niggers and wallop our debts. We have no 
longer any slaves, but we have no longer any debts, 
and can exclaim with the old darkey at the camp¬ 
meeting, who, whenever he got happy, went about 
shouting, “ Bless the Lord ! I’m gettin’ fatter an’ 
fatter! ” 

The truth is, that behind the great ruffle the South 
wore to its shirt, there lay concealed a superb man¬ 
hood. That this manhood was perverted, there is no 
doubt. That it wasted its energies upon trifles, is 
beyond dispute. That it took a pride in cultivating 
what it called “ the vices of a gentleman,” I am 
afraid must be admitted. But, at heart, it was 
sound; from that heart flowed honest Anglo-Saxon 
blood; and, when it had to lay aside its “ store- 
clothes ” and put on its homespun, it was equal to the 
emergency. And the women of the South took their 
place by the side of the men of the South, and, with 
spinning-wheel and ploughshare, together they made 
a stand against the wolf at the door. That was fif¬ 
teen years ago, and to-day there is not a reward 
offered in a single Southern State for wolf-skins. 
The fact is, the very wolves have got ashamed of 
themselves and gone to work. 

I beg you to believe that, in saying this, my pur¬ 
pose is neither to amuse nor mislead you. Although 
my words may seem to carry with them an unbusi¬ 
ness-like levity, I assure you that my design is wholly 


business-like. You can see for yourselves what the 
South has done ; what the South can do. If all this 
has been achieved without credit, and without your 
powerful aid—and I am now addressing myself to the 
North and Last, which have feared to come South 
with their money—what might not be achieved if the 
vast aggregations of capital in the fiscal centres should 
add this land of wine, milk and honey to their fields 
of investment, and give us the same chief rates which 
are enjoyed by nearer, but not safer, borrowers ? The 
future of the South is not a whit less assured than 
the future of the West. Why should money which is 
freely loaned to Iowa and Illinois be refused to 
Alabama and Mississippi? I perfectly understand 
that business is business, and that capital is as unsec¬ 
tional as unsentimental. I am speaking from neither 
spirit. You have money to loan. We have a great 
country to develop. 

We need the money. You can make a profit off 
the development. When I say that we need money, 
I do not mean the sort of money once demanded by 
an old Georgia farmer, who, in the early days, came 
up to Milledgeville to see General Robert Toombs, at 
the time a director of the State Bank. “ Robert,” 
says he, “ the folks down our way air in need of more 
money.” The profane Robert replied : “Well, how 

in-are they going to get it?” “Why,” says 

the farmer, “ can’t you stomp it ? ” “ Suppose we do 

stomp it, how are we going to redeem it ? ” “ Ex¬ 

actly, Robert, exactly. That was just what I was 
coming to. You see the folks down our way air agin 
redemption.” We want good money, honest money, 
hard money, money that will redeem itself. 

We have given hostages to fortune and our works 
are before you. I know that the capital is prover¬ 
bially timid. But what are you afraid of? Is it our 
cotton that alarms you, or our corn, or our sugar? 
Perhaps it is our coal and iron. Without you, in 
truth, many of these products must make slow pro¬ 
gress, whilst others will continue to lie hid in the 
bowels of the earth. With you the South will bloom 
as a garden and sparkle as a gold-mine ; for, whether 
you tickle her fertile plains with a straw or apply a 
more violent titillation to her fat mountain-sides, she 
is ready to laugh a harvest of untold riches. 




MURAT HALSTEAD. 


JOURNALIST AND POLITICIAN. 



HE editor of “The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette” may be ranked 
as one of the greatest living journalists. He has directed the policy 
first of “The Commercial” and then of “The Commercial Gazette” 
for a space of forty years, and has wielded an influence over the 
people of the vast region in which his paper circulates, and, indeed, 
upon the whole nation, hardly second to that of any other single 


man. Sometimes mistaken, but always honest, fearless and persistent, his work as 
a journalist may be cited as a model of excellence, and he may well be described 
as typical of the highest form of American manhood. He is now sixty-seven 
years of age, but he bears his years with such buoyancy and retains so fully his 
powers of mind and body that he distinguished himself in 1896 by going as special 
correspondent to the scene of the rebellion in Cuba, writing from that island, not 
only a daily letter to “The New York Journal” on the military and political situa¬ 
tion, but also a series of daily articles in “The Standard-Union,” describing the 
manners and customs of Havana, and relating incidents of life in the tropics in 
a delightfully characteristic manner. 

Mr. Halstead is a native of Butler County, Ohio, a locality which has produced 
its full share of the notable men of our time. As the inhabitants of the neighbor¬ 
hood were of Welsh extraction, with no one of Irish descent among them, the 
name, “Paddy’s Run,” borne by their Post Office, was a cause of great offence to 
them. A strong party, however, among whom was Mr. Halstead, made consistent 
opposition to every effort to change the name, but, though the struggle was long, 
the whimsical title which referred to an almost forgotten incident in General 
Way lie’s expedition had finally to be abandoned, and the fastidious inhabitants now 
have their mail addressed to “Shandon.” The Halstead family came from North 
Carolina at the time when so many of her noble sons bore practical testimony to 
their belief in free institutions by refusing to remain longer in a slave state, and 
making, in many cases, the greatest sacrifices in order to live on free soil in the 
Northwest Territory. 

Murat Halstead grew up on a farm and made his way through the Farmer’s 
College, at College Hill, Ohio, as so many men of his class have done, by alternating 
college work with teaching a district school. He went immediately from college 
into newspaper life, contributing a great variety of articles to the Cincinnati papers, 
and in 1853 joined the staff of “The Commercial.” He soon became part owner 
and controlling editor. The success of his paper has been continuous from that 















































MURAT HALSTEAD. 


417 


time, and the fact is due in greatest measure to the foresight, energy and skill 
of Mr. Halstead. He became prominent in a national sense during the presidential 
campaign of 1856, and he was probably the only man who was present at all the 
national conventions of 1860, and one of the very few who foresaw the terrible 
conflict which was to follow. He had seen the hanging of John Brown, and 
reported it in vigorous fashion for his paper, and he was the Washington correspon¬ 
dent of “The Commercial” during the trying sessions of Congress which followed. 
He served as correspondent at the front during a part of the war, and “The Com¬ 
mercial” was no small factor in the national councils during that stormy time. 
His independence of mind is shown in his frequent criticism of the policy of the 
government. On one occasion he wrote a long letter to Secretary Stanton censuring 
in the strongest terms the measures which had been taken and outlining those 
which, in his opinion, would result in success. The document was afterwards filed 
away in the archives of the war department, bearing an inscription characteristic 
of the grim humor of the great war secretary: “How to Conduct the War— 
Halstead, M.” 

He went to Europe in 1870 with the puiqiose of joining the French armies, but 
not succeeding, managed to attach himself to those of the Germans. The experiences 
thus obtained not only furnished the basis of his newspaper correspondence at the 
time, but supplied the material for a number of delightfully instructive magazine 
articles. He has since visited Europe on several occasions, and in 1874 formed one 
of a distinguished company which made a journey to Iceland and took part in the 
celebration of the thousanclth anniversary of its settlement. In 1872 Mr. Halstead 
again demonstrated his independence by breaking loose from the regular organiza¬ 
tion of the Republican party and taking part in the bolt which resulted in the 
nomination of Greeley for the Presidency. He was not long, however, in getting 
back into the ranks, but his unwillingness to submit to party discipline and his 
persistence in criticising men and measures when he considered that they were 
opposed to the public interest, has probably been the means of preventing him from 
election on at least one occasion to the United States Senate. When he was nominated 
by President Harrison to be Minister to Germany, it was undoubtedly the same 
cause which insured his rejection in the Senate. 

For many years the “ Cincinnati Gazette” and the “ Commercial” had continued 
an energetic rivalry. Their political attitude was very much the same, and there 
was everything to gain and little to lose by the consolidation of the two papers 
which occurred early in the eighties, with Mr. Halstead as editor-in-chief, and Mr. 
Richard Smith, of the “ Gazette,” as business Manager. Since 1884 Mr. Halstead 
iias made his headquarters in Washington or New York; his editorial contributions 
going by telegraph to his paper and for several years past he has been editor of the 
Brooklyn “Standard Union,” and has contributed very largely to other papers, his 
signed articles upon the money question in “The New York Herald ” being notable 
examples of his ability as a writer and of his grasj' of the great questions of the 
time. The amount of work turned off by such a writer is prodigious. He says that 
he has undoubtedly written and published an average of more than a million words 
a year for forty years. If put in book form this would make in the aggregate some 
five hundred volumes of good size. 

27 




418 


MURAT HALSTEAD. 


Mr. Halstead was married in 1857 to Miss Mary Banks. They have four grown 
sons, all engaged in journalism ; three younger ones, and three daughters. Their 
family life has been all that such life should be, and the present generation of the 
Halsteads bears every promise of maintaining the high standard of honest thought 
and persistent effort set by the florid faced man, whose large figure and massive 
head—hair and beard long since snow white—seem likely to be conspicuous in 
many presidential conventions yet to come, as they have been in almost every one 
for nearly half a century. 


(from address on 


TO THE YOUNG MAN AT THE DOOR. 

THE MAXIMS, MARKETS, AND MISSIONS OF THE PRESS,’ 
THE WISCONSIN PRESS ASSOCIATION, 1889.) 


DELIVERED BEFORE 



E need to guard against ways of exclusiveness 
—against the assumption that for some 
mysterious reason the press has rights that 
the people have not; that there are privileges of the 
press in which the masses and classes do not partici¬ 
pate. The claim of privilege is a serious error. One 
either gains or loses rights in a profession. We have 
the same authority to speak as editors that we have 
as citizens. If we use a longer “ pole to knock the 
persimmons,” it is because we have a larger constitu¬ 
ency for our conversational ability; that doesn’t affect 
rights. It simply increases responsibility. One can 
say of a meritorious man or enterprise, or of a rascally 
schemer or scheme, as an editor the same that he 
could as a citizen, a tax-payer, a lawyer, minister, 
farmer, or blacksmith. It conduces to the better 
understanding of our business to know that we are 
like other folks, and not set apart, baptized, anointed, 
or otherwise sanctified, for an appointed and exclusive 
and unique service. 

It is in our line of occupation to buy white paper, 
impress ink upon it in such form as may be expressive 
of the news and our views, and agreeable to our 
friends or disagreeable to our foes, and sell the sheet 
when the paper becomes, by the inking thereof, that 
peculiar manufactured product, a newspaper, for a 
margin of profit. We are as gifted and good as 
anybody, so far as our natural rights are concerned, 
and are better or worse according to our behavior. 
It is our position to stand on the common ground 
with the people, and publish the news, and tell the 
truth about it as well as we can; and we shall, through 
influences certain in their operation, find the places 
wherein we belong. No one can escape the logic of 
his labor. 


Communications from young gentlemen in, or fresh 
from college, or active in other shops, who propose to 
go into journalism or newspaperdom, and want to 
know how to do it, are a common experience, for 
there is a popular fascination about our employment. 
There is nothing one could know—neither faculty to 
perform nor ability to endure—perfection of recollec¬ 
tion, thoroughness in history, capacity to apply the 
lessons of philosophy, comprehension of the law, or 
cultivated intuition of the Gospel—that would not be 
of servicegoing into newspaperdom. But it is beyond 
me to prescribe a course of study. It is easier, when 
you have the knack, to do than to tell. 

When the young man comes to say that he would 
be willing to undertake to run a newspaper—and we 
know that young man as soon as we see his anxious 
face at the door—and we sympathize with him, for 
we may remember to have been at the door instead 
of the desk, and willing to undertake the task of the 
gentleman who sat at the desk and asked what was 
wanted—when, perhaps, the youth at the door had in 
his pocket an essay on the “ Mound Builders” that 
he believed was the news of the day—and we don’t 
like to speak unkindly to the young man. But there 
are so many of him. He is so numerous that he is 
monotonous, and it is not always fair to utter the 
commonplaces of encouragement. It is well to ask 
the young man, who is willing to come in and do 
things, what he has done (and often he hasn’t done any¬ 
thing but have his being). What is it that he knows 
how to do better than anyone else can do it? If 
there be anything, the question settles itself, for one 
who knows how to do right well something that is to 
do, has a trade. The world is under his feet, and 
its hardness is firm footing. We must ask what the 











MURAT HALSTEAD. 


419 


young man wants to do? and he comes back with the 
awful vagueness that he is willing to do anything; 
and that always means nothing at all. It is the 
intensity of the current of electricity that makes the 
carbon incandescent and illuminating. The vital 
flame is the mystery that is immortal in the soul 
and in the universe. 

Who can tell the young man how to grasp the 
magic clew of the globe that spins with us? There 
is no turnpike or railroad that leads into journalism. 
There are vacancies for didactic amateurs. Nobody 
is wanted. And yet we are always looking out for 
somebody, and once in awhile he comes. He does 
not ask for a place, but takes that which is his. Do 
not say to the young man there are no possibilities. 
There certainly are more than ever before. Young 


man, if you want to get into journalism, break in. 
Don’t ask how. It is the finding of it out that will 
educate you to do the essential thing. The young; 
man must enter the newspaper office by main strength 
and awkwardness, and make a place for himself. 

The machines upon which we impress the sheets 
we produce for the market—and we all know how 
costly they are in their infinite variety of improve¬ 
ments, for the earnings of the editor are swept away 
by the incessant, insatiable requirements of the press- 
maker—this facile mechanism is not more changeable 
than the press itself, in its larger sense—and the one 
thing needful, first and last, is man. With all the 
changes, the intelligence of the printer and the 
personal force of the editor are indispensable. 











WHITELAW REID. 


EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK “ TRIBUNE.” 



HERE is an old adage which declares “ fortune favors the brave.” 
This seems to be eminently true in the case of Whitelaw Reid, than 
whose life few in American literature are more inspiring to the 
ambitious but poor youth struggling upward for recognition among 
his fellow-men ; for it was by dint of hard work, heroic energy and 
unflagging perseverance that he has worked himself from the ranks 
of obscurity to one of the most prominent and honorable positions in modern 
journalism. 

Whitelaw Reid was born near Xenia, Ohio, October 27, 1837. The principle of 
industry was early inculcated in his life; and, besides doing his share in the work 
of the family, he found so much time for study that he graduated from the Miami 
University before he was twenty years of age and was actively engaged in journalism 
and politics before his majority,—making speeches in the Fremont campaign on 
the Republican side,—and was made editor of the “ Xenian News ” when only 
twenty-one years of age/ When the Civil War began, he had attained such a repu¬ 
tation as a newspaper writer that the “ Cincinnati Gazette ” sent him to the field as 
its special correspondent. He made his headquarters at Washington, and his letters 
concerned not only the war, but dwelt as well on the current politics. These 
attracted attention by their thorough information and pungent style. He made 
excursions to the army wherever there was prospect of active operation, was aide-de- 
camp to General Rosecrans and was present at the battles of Shiloh and Gettysburg. 
In 1863, he was elected Librarian of the House of Representatives at Washington, 
in which capacity he served until 1866. After the war, he engaged for one year in 
a cotton plantation in Louisiana and embodied the result of his observations in his 
first book entitled “ After the War ” (1867). 

One of the most important of all the State histories of the Civil War is Mr. 
Reid’s “ Ohio in the War,” which was issued in two volumes in 1868. It con¬ 
tained elaborate biographies of the chief Ohio participants of the army and a com¬ 
plete history of that State from 1861 to 1865. This work so attracted Horace 
Greeley, of the New York “ Tribune,” that he employed Mr. Reid as an editorial 
writer upon his paper, and the latter removed to New York City in 1868, and after 
Mr. Greeley’s death, in 1872, succeded as editor-in-chief and principal owner of the 
“Tribune.” “Schools of Journalism” appeared in 1871, and “Scholars in Politics” 
in 1873. 


420 










































WHITELAW REID. 


421 


The Legislature of New York in 1878 manifested the popular esteem in which 
Mr. Reid was held by electing him to be a regent of the State University for life. 
He was also offered by President Hayes the post of Minister to Germany and a 
similar appointment by President Garfield, both of which he declined, preferring 
rather to devote his attention to his paper, which was one of the leading organs of the 
Republican Party in the United States. In 1879, Mr. Reid published a volume 
entitled “ Some Newspaper Tendencies,” and in 1881 appeared his book, “Town 
Hall Suggestions.” During President Harrison’s administration, though he had 
already twice declined a foreign portfolio, he accepted, in 1889, the United States 
mission to France. At the Republican Convention which met at Chicago in 1892, 
he was nominated for Vice-President of the United States and ran on the ticket 
with President Harrison. 

Mr. Reid has a magnificent home in the vicinity of New York, where he delights 
with his charming family, consisting of a wife and several children, to entertain his 
friends. He has traveled extensively in foreign countries and many of the celebri¬ 
ties of Europe have enjoyed the hospitality of his palatial home. In 1897, Whitelaw 
Reid was appointed a special envoy to represent the United States at the celebration 
of the Queen’s Jubilee. His wife attended him on this mission, and, in company 
with the United States Ambassador, Colonel John Hay, they were the recipients of 
many honors, among which was an invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Reid to visit the 
Queen on the afternoon of July 6, when they dined with Her Majesty, and, at her 
special request, slept that night in Windsor Castle. It may be of interest to state 
in this connection that, though Mr. Reid was the United States’ special envoy, he 
and his secretaries are said to have paid their own expenses. This statement, if it 
be true, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Reid is a very wealthy man, evinces a 
liberality in the service of the government which should not pass unnoticed. 


“ PICTURES OF A LOUISIANA PLANTATION.” * 
(from “some southern reminiscences.”) 



SPENT a year or two, after the close of 
the war in the Southern States, mostly on 
Louisiana and Alabama cotton-plantations; 
and I shall try to revive some recollections of that 
experience. 

It was one of those perfect days which Louisianians 
get in February, instead of waiting, like poor Massa¬ 
chusetts Yankees, till June for them, when I crossed 
from Natchez to take possession of two or three river 
plantations on which I dreamed of making my fortune 
in a year. The road led directly down the levee. 
On the right rolled the Mississippi, still far below its 
banks," and giving no sign of the flood that a few 
months later was to drown our hopes. To the left 
stretched westward for a mile the unbroken expanse 


of cotton land, bounded by the dark fringe of cypress 
and the swamp. Through a drove of scrawny cattle 
and broken-down mules, pasturing on the rich Ber¬ 
muda grass along the levee, under the lazy care of 
the one-armed “stock-minder,” I made my way at 
last down a grassy lane to the broad-porched, many- 
windowed cottage propped up four or five feet from 
the damp soil by pillars of cypress, which the agent 
had called the “mansion.” It looked out pleasantly 
from the foliage of a grove of China and pecan trees, 
and was flanked, on the one hand by a beautifully 
cultivated vegetable garden, several acres in extent, 
and on the other by the “ quarters,”—a double row 
of cabins, each with two rooms and a projecting roof, 
covering an earthen-floored porch. A street, over- 


* Copyright, Wm. F. Gill & Co. 










WHITELAW REID. 



grown with grass and weeds, ran from the “mansion” 
down between the rows of cabins, and stopped at the 
plantation blacksmith and carpenter shop. Behind 
•each cabin was a little garden, jealously fenced off 
from all the rest with the roughest of cypress pickets, 
and its gate guarded by an enormous padlock. “ Nig¬ 
gers never trust one another about their gardens or 
hen-houses,” explained the overseer, who was making 
me acquainted with my new home. 

***** 


I rode out first, that perfect day, among the gang 
of a hundred and fifty negroes, who, on these planta¬ 
tions, were for the year to compromise between their 
respect and their newborn spirit of independence by 
calling me Mistah instead of Massa, there were no 
forebodings. Two “ plough-gangs ” and two “ hoe- 
gangs ” were slowly measuring their length along the 
two-mile front. Among each rode its own negro 
driver, sometimes loundinG; in his saddle with one lea 
lodged on the pommel, sometimes shouting sharp, 



A COTTON FIELD IN LOUISIANA. 


abrupt orders to the delinquents. In each plough- 
gang were fifteen scrawny mules, with corn-husk 
'Collars, gunny-bags, and bedcord plough-lines. The 
•Calhoun ploughs (the favorite implement through 
all that region, then, and doubtless still, retaining the 
name given it long before war was dreamed of) were 
Tat her lazily managed by the picked hands of the 
plantation. Among them were several women, who 
proved among the best laborers of the gan«\ A 
-quarter of a mile ahead a picturesque sight presented 
Itself. A great crowd of women and children, with a 


few aged or weakly men among them, were scattered 
along the old cotton-rows, chopping down weeds, 
gathering together the trash that covered the land' 
and firing little heaps of it, while through the clouds 
of smoke came an incessant chatter of the girls, and 
an occasional snatch of a camp-meeting hymn from 
the elders. “ Gib me some backey, please,” was the 
fiist salutation I received. They were dressed in a 
stout blue cottonade, the skirts drawn up to the 
knees, and reefed in a loose bunch at the waists; 
brogans of incredible sizes covered their feet and 













WHITELAW KEID. 


423 


there was a little waste of money on the useless 
decency of stockings, but gay bandannas were wound 
in profuse splendor around their heads. 

I he moment the sun disappeared every hoe was 
shouldered. Some took up army-blouses or stout 
men s overcoats, and drew them on; others gathered 
fragments of bark to kindle their evening fires, and 
balanced them nicely on their heads. In a moment 
the whole noisy crowd was filing across the plantation 
towards the quarters, joining the plough-gang, plead¬ 
ing for rides on the mules, or flirting with the drivers, 
and looking as much like a troop flocking to a circus 
or rustic fair as a party of weary farm-laborers. At 
the house the drivers soon reported their grievances. 
“ Fern women done been squabblin’ ’rnong dei’ selves 
dis a’ternoon, so I’s hardly git any wuck at all out of 
’em.” “ Fanny and Milly done got sick to-day ; an’ 

Sally heerd dat her husban's mustered out ob de 
army, an’ she gone up to Natchez to fine him.” 
u Fern sucklers ain’t jus’ wuf nuffin at all. ’Bout 
eight o’clock dey goes off to de quarters of deir babies, 
an’ I don’ nebber see nuffin mo’ ob ’em till ’bout 
elebben. Fen de same way in de a’ternoon, till I’s 
sick ob de hull lot. Fe moody (Bermuda grass) 
mighty tough 'long heah, an’ I could’nt make dem 
women put in deir hoes to suit me nohow.” Presently 
men and women trooped up for the ticket represent¬ 
ing their day’s work. The women were soon busy 
preparing their supper of mess pork and early vege¬ 
tables ; while the plough-gang gathered about the 
overseer. “ He’d done promise dem a drink o’ wiskey, 
if dey’d finish dat cut, and dey’d done it.” The 
whiskey was soon forthcoming, well watered with a 
trifle of Cayenne pepper to conceal the lack of spirit, 
and a little tobacco soaked in it to preserve the color. 
The most drank it down at a gulp from the glass into 
which, for one after another, the overseer poured 
u de lowance.” A few, as their turns came, passed 
up tin cups and went off with their treasure, chuck¬ 
ling about “ de splendid toddy we’s hab to-night.” 
Then came a little trade with the overseer at “ the 
store.” Some wanted a pound or two of sugar; 
others, a paper of needles or a bar of soap; many of 
the young men, “ two bits’ wuf” of candy or a brass 
ring. In an hour trade was over, and the quarters 
were as silent as a churchyard. But, next morning, 
at four o’clock, I was aroused by the shrill “ driber’s 
horn.” Two hours later it was blown again, and, 


looking from my window just as the first rays of 
light came level across the field, I saw the women 
filing out, with their hoes, and the ploughmen 
leisurely sauntering down to the stables, each with 
corn-husk collar and bedcord plough-lines in his 
hands. The passion for whiskey among the negroes 
seemed universal. I never saw a man, woman or 
child, reckless young scapegrace or sanctimonious old 
preacher, among them, who would refuse it; and 
the most had no hesitancy in begging it whenever 
they could. Many of them spent half their earnings 
buying whiskey. That sold on any of the plantations 
I ever visited or heard of was always watered down 
at least one-fourth. Perhaps it was owing to this 
fact, though it seemed rather an evidence of unex¬ 
pected powers of self-restraint, that so few w^ere to be 
seen intoxicated. 

Furing the two or three years in which I spent 
most of my time among them, seeing scores and 
sometimes hundreds in a day, I do not remember 
seeing more than one man absolutely drunk. He 
had bought a quart of whiskey, one Saturday night, 
at a low liquor shop in Natchez. Next morning 
early he attacked it, and in about an hour the 
whiskey and he were used up together. Hearing 
an unusual noise in the quarters, I walked down that 
way and found the plough-driver and the overseer 
both trying to quiet Horace. He was unable to 
stand alone, but he contrived to do a vast deal of 
shouting. As I approached, the driver said, u Horace, 
don’t make so much noise; don’t you see Mr. R. ?” 
He looked around as if surprised at learning it. 

“ Boss, is dat you ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Boss, I’s drunk; boss, I’s ’shamed o’ myself! 
but I’s drunk ! I ’sarve good w’ipping. Boss,— 
boss, s-s-slap me in de face, boss.” 

I was not much disposed to administer the “ slap¬ 
ping ; ” but Horace kept repeating, with a drunken 
man’s persistency, “ Slap me in de face, boss; please, 
boss.” Finally I did give him a ringing cuff on the 
ear. Horace jerked off his cap, and ducked down his 
head with great respect, saying, “ T’ank you, boss.” 
Then, grinning his maudlin smile, he threw open his 
arms as if to embrace me, and exclaimed, “ Now kiss 
me, boss!” Next morning Horace was at work with 
the rest, and though he bought many quarts of whis¬ 
key afterwards, I never saw him drunk again. 





Era n> rsirairaria rararift Q> ra f-Ji Cj> Oi Q)~(3) (5) Q> Q) QQ) Q Q>Q ) Q> ® @ Q'lQX J QDQ) Q_Qj= 



ALBERT SHAW. 

EDITOR OF THE “ REVIEW OF REVIEWS.” 

seems, sometimes, that the influence of the editor has departed, and 
that notwithstanding the survival of a few men like Halstead and 
Reid, who helped to make the papers which moulded public opinion 
thirty years ago, the newspaper fills no such place as it did in 
the day of their prime, but a different place, not a lower or a 
less important one. Among the men who through the medium of 
the press are doing most to promote the spread of intelligence, and particularly to 
further the cause of good government and to elevate the civic life of our country, 
Albert Shaw fills a prominent place. 

Dr. Shaw is a young man of Western birth, tall and slender in figure, with a 
keen eye, a quick and rather nervous manner, and features expressing in an unusual 
degree intelligence, energy, and character. Born in Ohio, the central West, Dr. 
Shaw represents a catholicity of feeling and knowledge which very few Americans 
possess. He knows the whole country. He is not distinctly an Eastern man, a 
Western man, or a man of the Pacific slope: he is a man of America. He knows 
the characteristics of each section, its strength and its weakness. With New Eng¬ 
land blood in his veins, but with the energizing influences of the West about his 
boyhood, Dr. Shaw graduated at Iowa College, the oldest institution of its class west 
of the Mississippi. During his college life the future journalist and writer devoted 
a great deal of time to the study of literature and of literary style, disclosing very 
early two qualities which are pre-eminently characteristic of him to-day, lucidity 
and directness. After graduation Dr. Shaw began his professional life as editor of 
“The Grinnell Herald,” a position which enabled him to master all the mechanical 
and routine work of journalism. 

His aims were not the aims of the ordinary journalist. He saw wfith unusual 
clearness the possibilities of his profession, and he saw also that he needed a wider 
educational basis. His interest in social and political topics was the interest of a 
man of philosophic mind, eager to learn the principles and not simply to record the 
varying aspects from day to day. In order the better to secure the equipment 
of which he felt the need, he entered the Johns Hopkins University and took a 
post-graduate course. It was during his residence in Baltimore that he met Pro¬ 
fessor Bryce, who recognized his rare ability and intelligence, and who used his un¬ 
usually large knowledge of social and political conditions in the country. While car¬ 
rying on his special studies at the Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Shaw joined the 

424 



















































ALBERT SHAW. 


425 


editorial staff of the Minneapolis daily “Tribune.” After receiving the degree of 
Ph. I), in 1884, he removed permanently to Minneapolis, and took his place at the 
head of the staff of the “Tribune.” His work almost at once attracted attention. 


Its breadth, its thoroughness, its candor, and its ability were of a kind which made 
themselves recognized on the instant. Four years later Dr. Shaw spent a year and 
a half studying social and political conditions in Europe, traveling extensively and 
devoting much time to the examination of the condition of municipalities. It was 
this study which has borne fruit in the two volumes on Municipal Government which 
have come from the press of the Century Company, and which have given Dr. Shaw 
the first rank as an authority on these matters. When the “Review of Reviews” 
was established in this country in 1891, Dr. Shaw became its editor, and his success 
in the management of this very important periodical has justified the earlier expecta¬ 
tions entertained by his friends, for he has given the “Review of Reviews” a 
commanding position. He is one of the very few journalists in this country who 
treat their work from the professional standpoint, who are thoroughly equipped for 
it, and who regard themselves as standing in a responsible relation to a great and 
intelligent public. Dr. Shaw’s presentation of news is pre-eminently full, candid, 
and unpartisan; his discussion of principles is broad-minded, rational, and persua¬ 
sive. He is entirely free from the short-sighted partisanship of the great majority 
of newspaper editors, and he appreciates to the full the power of intelligent, judicial 
statement. His opinions, for this reason, carry great weight, and it is not too much 
to say that he has not his superior in the field of American journalism. 


RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST. 



ET us imagine a man from the East who has 
visited the Northwestern States and Ter¬ 
ritories at some time between the years 
1870 and 1875, and who retains a strong impression 
of what he saw, but who has not been west of Chicago 
since that time, until, in the World’s Fair year he 
determines upon a new exploration of Iowa, Nebraska, 
the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin. However 
well informed he had tried to keep himself through 
written descriptions and statistical records of Western 
progress, he would see what nothing but the evidence 
of his own eyes could have made him believe to be 
possible. Iowa in 1870 was already producing a large 
crop of cereals, and was inhabited by a thriving, 
though very new, farming population. But the aspect 
of the country was bare and uninviting, except in the 


vicinity of the older communities on the Mississippi 
River. As one advanced across the State the farm¬ 
houses were very small, and looked like isolated dry- 
goods boxes; there were few well-built barns or farm 
buildings ; and the struggling young cottonwood and 


soft-maple saplings planted in close groves about the 
tiny houses were so slight an obstruction to the sweep 
of vision across the open prairie that they only seemed 
to emphasize the monotonous stretches of fertile, but 
uninteresting plain. Now the landscape is wholly 
transformed. A railroad ride in June through the 
best parts of Iowa reminds one of a ride through 
some of the pleasantest farming districts of England. 
The primitive “ claim shanties ” of thirty years ago 
have given place to commodious farm-houses flanked 
by great barns and hay-ricks, and the well-appointed 
structures of a prosperous agriculture. In the rich, 
deep meadows herds of fine-blooded cattle are grazing. 
What was once a blank, dreary landscape is now 
garden-like and inviting. The poor little saplings of 
the earlier days, which seemed to be apologizing to 
the robust corn-stalks in the neighboring fields, have 
grown on that deep soil into great, spreading trees. 
One can easily imagine, as he looks off in every direc¬ 
tion and notes a wooded horizon, that he is—as in 
Ohio, Indiana, or Kentucky—in a farming region 










42 G 


ALBERT SHAW. 


which has been cleared out of primeval forests. There 
are many towns I might mention which twenty-five 
years ago, with their new, wooden shanties scattered 
over the bare face of the prairie, seemed the hottest 
place on earth as the summer sun beat upon their 
unshaded streets and roofs, and seemed the coldest 
places on earth when the fierce blizzards of winter 
swept unchecked across the prairie expanses. To-day 
the density of shade in those towns is deemed of posi¬ 
tive detriment to health, and for several years past 
there has been a systematic thinning out and trim¬ 
ming up of the great, clustering elms. Trees of from 
six to ten feet in girth are found everywhere by the 
hundreds of thousands. Each farm-house is sheltered 
from winter winds by its own dense groves. Many 
of the farmers are able from the surplus growth of 
wood upon their estates to provide themselves with a 
large and regular supply of fuel. If I have dwelt at 
some length upon this picture of the transformation 
of the bleak, grain-producing Iowa prairies of thirty 
years ago into the dairy and live-stock farms of to¬ 
day, with their fragrant meadows and ample groves, 
it is because the picture is one which reveals so much 
as to the nature and meaning of Northwestern 
progress. 

The tendency to rely upon united public action is 
illustrated in the growth of Northwestern educational 
systems. The universities of these commonwealths 
are State universities. Professional education is under 
the State auspices and control. The normal schools 
and the agricultural schools belong to the State. The 
public high school provides intermediate instruction. 
The common district school, supported jointly by local 
taxation and State subvention, gives elementary edu¬ 
cation to the children of all classes. As the towns 
grow the tendency to graft manual and technical 
courses upon the ordinary public school curriculum is 
unmistakably strong. The Northwest, more than any 
other part of the country, is disposed to make every 
kind of education a public function. 

Radicalism has flourished in the homogeneous agri¬ 
cultural society of the Northwest. In the anti- 
monopoly conflict there seemed to have survived some 
of the intensity of feeling that characterized the anti¬ 
slavery movement; and a tinge of this fanatical quality 


has always been apparent in the Western and North¬ 
western monetary heresies. But it is in the temper¬ 
ance movement that this sweep of radical impulse has 
been most irresistible. It was natural that the move¬ 
ment should become political and take the form of an 
agitation for prohibition. The history of prohibition 
in Iowa, Kansas and the Dakotas, and of temperance 
legislation in Minnesdta and Nebraska, reveals—even 
better perhaps than the history of the anti-monopoly 
movement—the radicalism, homogeneity, and powerful 
socializing tendencies of the Northwestern people. 
Between these different agitations there has been in 
reality no slight degree of relationship; at least their 
origin is to be traced to the same general condition 
of society. 

The extent to which a modern community resorts 
to State action depends in no small measure upon the 
accumulation of private resources. Public or organ¬ 
ized initiative will be relatively strongest where the 
impulse to progress is positive but the ability of indi¬ 
viduals is small. There are few rich men in the 
Northwest. Iowa, great as is the Hawkeye State, 
has no large city and no large fortunes. Of Kansas 
the same thing may be said. The Dakotas have no 
rich men and no cities. Minnesota has Minneapolis 
and St. Paul, and Nebraska has Omaha ; but other¬ 
wise these two States are farming communities, with¬ 
out large cities or concentrated private capital. 
Accordingly the recourse to public action is compara¬ 
tively easy. South Dakota farmers desire to guard 
against drought by opening artesian wells for irriga¬ 
tion. They resort to State legislation and the sale of 
county bonds. North Dakota wheat growers are un¬ 
fortunate in the failure of crops. They secure seed- 
wheat through State action and their county govern¬ 
ments. A similarity of condition fosters associated 
action, and facilitates the progress of popular move¬ 
ments. 

In such a society the spirit of action is intense. If 
there are few philosophers, there is remarkable diffu¬ 
sion of popular knowledge and elementary education. 
The dry atmosphere and the cold winters are nerve- 
stimulants, and life seems to have a higher tension 
and velocity than in other parts of the country. 



9 @ 



JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 


THE POPULAR NOVELIST AND CONTRIBUTOR. 



ULIAN HAWTHORNE lias inherited much of his father’s literary 
ability. His recent celebrity has been largely due to his success in 
portraying to the readers of popular magazines facts of world-wide 
interest like the famine in India, but to the special power of vivid 
statement which belongs to the newspaper reporter, he joins the 
imaginative power which enables him to recognize the materials of 
romance and the gift of clear and graceful expression. He is the son of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, and was born in Boston in 1846. He traveled abroad with his parents, 
returning and entering Harvard in 1863. His college life seems to have been 
devoted more to athletics than to serious learning. He took up the study of civil 
engineering and went to Dresden to carry it on, but the Fran co-Prussian war 
breaking out while he was visiting at home, he found employment as an engineer 
under General George B. McClellan in the department of docks in New York. Pie 
began soon after to write stories and sketches for the magazines, and losing his posi¬ 
tion in 1872, he determined to devote himself to literature. He now went abroad, 
living for several years, first in England and then in Dresden, and again in Eng¬ 
land, where he remained until 1881, and then after a short stay in Ireland, returned 
to New York. A number of his stories were published while he was abroad. Of 
these the most important were “ Bressant ” and “ Idolatry.” For two years he was 
connected with the London “ Spectator,” and he contributed to the “ Contemporary 
Review ” a series of sketches called “ Saxon Studies,” which were afterwards pub¬ 
lished in book form. The novel “ Garth ” followed and collections of stories and 
novelettes entitled “The Laughing Mill;” “Archibald Malmaison;” “Ellice 
Quentin;” “Prince Saroni’s Wife;” and the “Yellow Cap” fairy stories. These 
were all published abroad, but a part of them were afterward reprinted in America, 
Later he published “Sebastian Strome;” “ Fortune’s Fool,” and in 1884 “Dust” 
and “ Noble Blood.” On his return to America he edited his father’s posthumous 
romance “ Dr. Grimshaw’s Secret,” and prepared the biography of his father and 
mother. Since that time he has contributed a large number of stories and sketches 
to magazines. His most recent work has been an expedition to India to write for 
American periodicals an account of the famine in that country. One of our extracts 
is taken from this account and will very adequately illustrate his power of telling 
things so that his readers can see them with his eyes. Mr. Hawthrone’s activity does 

427 
































428 


JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 


not abate and his friends and admirers expect from him even better work than he 

has vet done. 

%/ 

-K>«- 


THE WAYSIDE AND THE WAR* 

(FROM“ NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND HIS WIFE.”) 


T was a hot day towards the close of June,' 
1860, when Hawthorne alighted from a 
train at Concord station, and drove up in 
the railway wagon to the Wayside. The fields looked 
brown, the trees were dusty, and the sun white and 
brilliant. At certain seasons in Concord the heat 
stagnates and simmers, until it seems as if nothing 
but a grasshopper could live. The water in the river 
is so warm that to bathe in it is merely to exchange 
one kind of heat for another. The very shadow of 
the trees is torrid ; and I have known the thermome¬ 
ter to touch 112° in the shade. No breeze stirs 
throughout the long sultry day; and the feverish 
nights bring mosquitoes, but no relief. To come from 
the salt freshness of the Atlantic into this living oven 
is a startling change, especially when one has his 
memory full of cool, green England. Such was 
America’s first greeting to Hawthorne, on his return 
from a seven years’ absence; it was to this that he 
had looked forward so lovingly and so long. As he 
passed one little wooden house after another, with 
their white clap boards and their green blinds, per¬ 
haps he found his thoughts not quite so cloudless as 
the sky. It is dangerous to have a home ; too much 
is required of it. 


The Wayside, however, was not white, it was painted 
a dingy buff color. The larches and Norway pines, 
several hundred of which had been sent out from 
England, were planted along the paths, and were for 
the most part doing well. The well-remembered hill¬ 
side, with its rude terraces, shadowed by apple-trees, 
and its summit green with pines, rose behind the 
house ; and in front, on the other side of the highway, 
extended a broad meadow of seven acres, bounded by 
a brook, above which hung drooping willows. It 
was, upon the whole, as pleasant a place as any in the 
village, and much might be done to enhance its 
beauty. It had been occupied, during our absence, 
by a brother of Mrs. Hawthorne; and the house 
itself was in excellent order, and looked just the same 
as in our last memory of it. A good many altera¬ 
tions have been made since then ; another story was 
added to the western wing, the tower was built up 
behind, and two other rooms were put on in the rear. 
These changes, together with some modifications 
about the place, such as opening up of paths, the 
cutting down of some trees, and the planting of 
others, were among the last things that engaged 
Hawthorne’s attention in this life. 



FIRST MONTHS IN ENGLAND* 

FROM “ NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND HIS WIFE. 


E are told, truly enough, that goodness does 
not always command good fortune in this 
J world, that just hopes are often deferred 
until it is too late to enjoy their realization, that fame 
and honor only discover a man after he has ceased 
to value them ; and a large and respectable portion 
of modern fiction is occupied in impressing these 
sober lessons upon us. It is pleasant, nevertheless, 
to believe that sometimes fate condescends not to be 
so unmitigable, and that a cloudy and gusty morning 
does occasionally brighten into a sunny and genial 
afternoon. Too long a course of apparently perverse 


and unreasonable accidents bewilders the mind, and 
the few and fleeting gleams of compensation seem a 
mockery. One source of the perennial charm of 
Goldsmith’s “ Vicar of Wakefield ” is, I think, that 
in it the dividing line between the good and the bad 
fortune is so distinctly drawn. Just when a man 
has done his utmost, and all seems lost, Providence 
steps in, brings aid from the most unexpected quarter, 
and kindles everything into brighter and ever brigh¬ 
ter prosperity. The action and reaction are positive 
and complete, and we arise refreshed and comforted 
from the experience. 



* Copyright, Ticknor k Co. 


























JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 


429 


It was somewhat thus with Hawthorne, though the 
picture of his career is to be painted in a lower and 
more delicate tone than that of Goldsmith’s brilliant 
little canvas. Up to the time of publication of “ The 
Scarlet Letter,” his external circumstances had cer¬ 
tainly been growing more and more unpromising; 
though, on the other hand, his inner domestic life had 
been full of the most vital and tender satisfactions. 
But the date of his first popular success in literature 
also marks the commencement of a worldly prosperity 
which, though never by any means splendid (as we 
shall presently see), at any rate sufficed to allay the 
immediate anxiety about to-morrow’s bread-and- 
butter, from which he had not hitherto been free. 
The three American novels were written and pub¬ 
lished in rapid succession, and were reprinted in Eng¬ 
land, the first two being pirated; but for the last, 
“ The Blithedale Romance,” two hundred pounds were 


obtained from Messrs. Chapman and Hall for ad¬ 
vance sheets. There is every reason to believe that 
during the ensuing years other romances would have 
been written; and perhaps they would have been as 
good as, or better than, those that went before. But 
it is vain to speculate as to what might have been. 
What actually happened was that Hawthorne was 
appointed United States Consul to Liverpool, and for 
six years to come his literary exercises were confined 
to his consular despatches and to six or eight volumes 
of his English, French and Italian Journals. It was 
a long abstinence; possibly it was a beneficent one. 
The production of such books as “ The Scarlet 
Letter ” and “ The House of Seven Gables ” cannot 
go on indefinitely ; though they seem to be easily 
written when they are written, they represent a great 
deal of the writer’s spiritual existence. At all events, 
it is better to write too little than too much. 




THE HORRORS OF THE PLAGUE IN INDIA. 

(FROM THE “ COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE.”) 



MET the local inspectors at the railway 
station leading a horse which they had 
kindly provided for me. We made a tour 
of half a dozen villages, alighting to investigate any¬ 
thing that appeared suspicious. The first and largest 
of the villages rambles along on either side of a street 
scarcely wider than an ordinary footpath. The 
houses were mud huts, whitewashed, or built of a 
kind of rubble, with the roofs of loose tiles common 
in India. Cocoa palms were numerous all over the 
region, and there were solid groves of them outside 
the settlements, coming down to the water’s edge. 
The inhabitants for the most part professed the 
Roman Catholic faith ; crosses stood at every meeting 
of the ways, and priests in black gowns with wide- 
brimmed black hats stole past us occasionally. Of 
native inhabitants, however, we saw very few ; those 
who were not in the graveyards had locked up their 
houses and fled the town. All the houses in which 
death or sickness had occurred had been already 
visited by the inspectors, emptied of their contents 
and disinfected. Those which were still occupied 
were kept under strict supervision. One which had 
been occupied the day before was now found to be 
shut. The inspectors called up a native and ques¬ 


tioned him. From his replies it appeared that there 
had been symptoms of the disease. We dismounted 
and made an examination. Every door and window 
was fastened, but by forcing open a blind we were 
able to see the interior. It was empty of life and of 
most of the movable furniture ; but the floor of dried 
mud was strewn with the dead carcasses of rats. 
Undoubtedly the plague had been here. The house 
was marked for destruction, and we proceeded. * * 

Low, flat ledges of rock extended into the sea. A 
group of creatures in loin-cloths and red turbans were 
squatting or moving about between two or three 
heaps of burning timber. These were made of stout 
logs piled across one another to a height of about 
four feet. Half-way in the pile was placed a human 
body; it was not entirely covered by the wood, but a 
leg projected here, an arm there. The flames blazed 
up fiercely, their flickering red tongues contrasting 
with the pale blue of the calm sea beyond. The 
smoke arose thick and unctuous, and, fortunately, 
was carried seaward. One of the pyres had burnt 
down to white ashes, and nothing recognizable as 
human remained. The people whose bodies were 
here burned had died in the segregation huts the 
night before. 













RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. 



ICHARD HARDING DAVIS lias shown a marvelous skill in seeing 
the world, in travel, and of describing it as he sees it. He is not a 
profound student of the mystery of the human mind, but he pos¬ 
sesses in high degree and in rare quality an instinct of selection, a 
clear sense of an artistic situation in a group of more or less ordinary 
circumstances and a gift in interesting description. He is, in short, 


a very clever newspaper reporter who has transferred his field of service from the 
region of the actual to the realm of the imaginary. His reputation, however, is 
about equally divided between his works of description and travel and his stories 
of a more imaginative order, though in both classes of writings, he is above every¬ 


thing else a describe!* of what he has seen. 


He was born in Philadelphia in 1864, the son of L. Clark Davis, an editor of 
reputation, and Rebecca Harding Davis, the author of many good stories, so that the 
child had a literary inheritance and an hereditary bent for letters. He studied for 
three years in Lehigh University and one year in Johns Hopkins, after which he 
began his interesting career as a journalist, serving successively “The Record,” 
“Pi *ess,” and “Telegraph” of Philadelphia. On his return from a European trip, 
he became connected with the New York “Evening Sun,” for which he wrote the 
famous series of “ Van Bibber Sketches.” 

The story, however, which gave him his first real fame was “Gallegher,” the 
scene of which is laid in Philadelphia, though, as is true of all his stories, locality 
plays but little part in his tales, modes of life and not scenery being the main 
feature. 

He describes the happy-go-lucky life of the young club man, adventures in 
saloons, and scenes among burglars with remarkable realism, for as reporter he 
lived for a time among the “reprobates,” in disguise, to make a careful study of 
their manner of life. Again when he describes “The West from a Car Window,” 
he is giving scenes which he saw and types of life which he closely observed. His 
books always have the distinctive mark of spirit; they are full of life and activity, 
everything moves on and something “happens.” This is as true of his books of 
travel as of his stories. He has traveled extensively, and he has given descriptions 
of most of his journeys. 

Beside “The West from a Car Window” he has written, with the same reportorial 
skill and fidelity to observed facts, a book of descriptions of life and manners in the 
East, with scenes and incidents at Gibraltar and Tangiers, in Cairo, Athens and 
Constantinople. 


430 
































RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. 


431 


He lias also produced a book of travels in England, which touches rather the sur¬ 
face ot English life than the deeper traits of character which Emerson has so faith- 
iu iy described. Davis writes as reporter of what is easily observed, while the 
other writes as philosopher. His latest collection of stories which shows his story¬ 
telling faculties at their best is called “The Exiles and Other Stories.” His most 
recent service as a journalist was as correspondent of “The London Times,” with 
the Greek forces during their recent humiliating conflict with the Turks. The 

selection given below will illustrate his vigorous style and the vivid character of 
his descriptions. 




THE GREEK DEFENCE OF VELESTINO. 

(FROM THE “ LONDON TIMES.”) 


HERE is a round hill to the north of the 
town, standing quite alone. It has a per¬ 
fectly flat top, and its proportions are 
exactly those of a giant bucket set upside down. We 
found the upper end of this bucket crowded with six 
mountain guns [there was one other correspondent 
with Mr. Davis at the time], and the battery was 
protesting violently. When it had uttered its protest 
the guns would throw themselves into the air, and 
would turn a complete somersault, as though with 
delight at the mischief they had done, or would whirl 
themselves upon one wheel while the other spun rap¬ 
idly in the air. Lieutenant Ambroise Frantzis was 
in command of the battery. It was he who had re¬ 
pulsed a Turkish cavalry charge of a few days before 
with this same battery, and he was as polite and calm 
and pleased with his excitable little guns as though they 
weighed a hundred tons each, and could send a shell 
nine miles instead of a scant three thousand yards. 

“ From this hill there was nothin" to be seen of the 
Turks but puffs of smoke in the plain, so we slid 
down its steep side and clambered up the ridges in 
front of us, where long rows of infantry were outlined 
against the sky. ... A bare-headed peasant boy, 
in dirty white petticoats, who seemed to consider the 
engagement in the light of an entertainment, came 
dancing down the hill to show us the foot-paths that 
led up the different ridges. He was one of the vil¬ 
lagers who had not run away or who was not farther 
up the valley, taking pot-shots at the hated Turks 
from behind rocks. He talked and laughed as he ran 
ahead of us, with many gestures, and imitated mock¬ 
ingly the sound of the bullets, and warned us with 
grave solicitude to be careful, as though he was in no 


possible danger himself. I saw him a great many 
times during the day, guiding company after company 
through the gulleys, and showing them how to ad¬ 
vance protected by the slope of the hills—a self-con¬ 
stituted scout—and with much the manner of a landed 
proprietor escorting visitors over his estate. And 
whenever a shell struck near him, he would run and 
retrieve the pieces, and lay them triumphantly at the 
feet of the officers, like a little fox-terrier that has 
scampered after a stick and brought it to his master’s 
feet. 

“ The men in the first trench—which was the only 
one which gave us a clear view of the Turkish forces 
—received us with cheerful nods and scraped out a 
place beside them, and covered the moist earth with 
their blankets. They exhibited a sort of childish 
pride and satisfaction at being under fire; and so far 
from showing the nervousness and shattered morale 
which had been prophesied for them after the rout at 
Larissa, they appeared on the contrary more than con¬ 
tent. As the day wore on, they became even lan¬ 
guidly bored with it all, and some sang in a low croon¬ 
ing tone, and others, in spite of the incessant rush of 
the shells, dozed in the full glare of the sun, and still 
others lay humped and crouched against the earth¬ 
works when the projectiles tore up the earth on the 
hill behind us. But when the order came to fire, 
they would scramble to their knees with alacrity, and 
many of them would continue firing on their own 
account, long after the whistle had sounded to cease 
firing. Some of the officers walked up and down, and 
directed the men in the trenches at their feet with the 
air of judges or time-keepers at an athletic meeting, 
who were observing a tug-of-war. Others exposed 











432 


RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. 


themselves in what looked like a spirit of braggadocio, 
for they moved with a swagger and called upon the 
men to notice how brave they were. Other officers 
rose only when it was necessary to observe some fresh 
movement upon the part of the enemy, and they did 
this without the least haste and simply as a part of 
their work, and regarded the bullets that instantly 
beset them as little as if they were so many flies. 

“ A Turkish soldier dragging a mule loaded with 
ammunition had appeared a quarter of a mile below 
us, and at sight of him the soldiers at once recognized 
that there was something tangible, something that 
could show some sign if they hit it. The white smoke 
they had aimed at before had floated away, but at the 
sight of this individual soldier the entire line ceased 
firing at the enemy’s trenches, and opened on the un¬ 
happy Turk and his mule, and as the dust spurted up 
at points nearer and nearer to where he stood, their 
excitement increased in proportion, until, when he 
gave the mule a kick and ran for his life, there was a 
triumphant shout all along the line, as though they had 
repulsed a regiment. That one man and his load of 
ammunition had for a few minutes represented to 
them the entire Turkish army. 

“As the Turks suddenly appeared below us, clamber¬ 
ing out of a long gully, it was as though they had 
sprung from the earth. On the moment the smiling 
landscape changed like a scene at a theatre, and hun¬ 


dreds of men rose from what had apparently been 
deserted hilltops, and stood outlined in silhoutte against 
the sunset, waves of smoke ran from crest to crest, 
spitting flashes of red flame, and men’s voices shrieked 
and shouted, and the Turkish shells raced each other 
so fiercely that they beat out the air until it groaned. 
It had come up so suddenly that it was like two dogs 
springing at each other’s throats, and, in a greater 
degree, it had something of the sound of two wild 
animals struggling for life. Volley answered volley as 
though with personal hate—one crashing in upon the 
roll of the other, or beating it out of recognition with 
the bursting roar of heavy cannon ; and to those who 
could do nothing but lie face downwards and listen to 
it, it seemed as though they had been caught in a 
burning building, and that the walls and roof were 
falling in on them. I do not know how long it lasted 
—probably not more than five minutes, although it 
seemed much longer than that—but finally the death- 
grip seemed to relax, the volleys came brokenly, like 
a man panting for breath, the bullets ceased to sound 
with the hiss of escaping steam, and rustled aimlessly 
by, and from hilltop to hilltop the officers’ whistles 
sounded as though a sportsman were calling off his 
dogs. The Turks had been driven back, and for the 
fourth day the Greeks had held Velestino successfully 
against them.” 



















■mm 


DANIEL WEBSTER 


HENRY CLAY 


PATRICK HENRY 


JOHN B. GOUGH 


HENRY WARD BEECHER 


HENRY W. GRADY 


CHAUNCY M. DEPEW. WENDELL PHILLIPS. EDWARD EVERETT, 

GREAT AMERICAN ORATORS AND POPULAR LECTURERS. 




































PATRICK HENRY. 

THE GREATEST ORATOR OF COLONIAL TIMES. 

HEARD the splendid display of Mr. Henry’s talents as a popular 
orator,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “they were great indeed, such as I 
have never heard from any other man. He appeared to me to speak 
as Homer wrote.” 

Few men in the history of the world have possessed in a degree 
equal to that of Patrick Henry, the power to move men’s minds and 
to influence their actions, but it was not until he was twenty-seven years old that 
his oratorical powers became known. He was a native Virginian of distinguished 
parentage and good education. He married very young, and tried farming and 
merchandising before he decided to become a lawyer, when he came at once into a 
large practice. He was engaged in 1763 to defend the Colony against the suit of a 
minister of the Established Church, brought to recover his salary which had been 
fixed at sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco. A failure of the crop had made the 
tobacco exceedingly valuable, and the Colonial Legislature had passed a law requir¬ 
ing the ministers to take money payment at the rate of two pence per pound. This 
act had not been approved by the King, and in his speech on this occasion, Mr. 
Henry boldly proclaimed the principles which afterward led to the Declaration of 
Independence, declaring that “ the King by disallowing acts of a salutary nature, 
from being the father of his people, degenerates into a tyrant and forfeits all rights 
to his subjects’ obedience.” From that day the fame of Patrick Henry, as a popular 
orator, spread throughout the Colonies. His famous speech, two years later, in the 
House of Burgesses, resulted in the passing of resolutions defining the rights of the 
Colonies and pronouncing the “ Stamp Act ” unconstitutional. The public mind 
was so inflamed that open resistance was everywhere made and the enforcement of 
the tax became impossible. Mr. Henry was now the leader of his Colony. He 
was concerned in all the principal movements during the trying times until 1774, 
when he was foremost in the movement which resulted in the calling of the Con¬ 
tinental Congress. Being a delegate to the Congress, he opened its deliberations by 
a speech in which he declared : “I am not a Virginian, but an American, and this 
broad patriotism characterized his speech and actions throughout his life. . On the 
outbreak of the war, he was made Commander of the forces raised in Viiginia,. but 
when these troops became a part of the Continental Army, his lack of militaiy 
experience prevented his continuance in so high a command and he retired to civil 

life. 



2 8 


433 

























434 


PATRICK HENRY. 



He became the first Governor of Virginia and was re-elected several times. 
Among liis distinguished services was the sending out of the expedition which con¬ 
quered the territory northwest of the Ohio, which territory now embraces the great 
States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. He early saw the 
defects in the Articles of Confederation and favored the formation of a stronger 
government. He thought the plan of the Constitution gave too much power to the 
general government; but his objections were largely removed by the first eleven 
amendments and he gave a hearty support to the administration of President Wash¬ 
ington. When the Alien and Sedition Laws were meeting with great opposition 
and there was danger of an attempt on the part of Virginia to resist their 
further execution, he strongly opposed such action, and, although he did not ap- 
pr ove of the laws, and urged the use of every possible means to effect their repeal, 
lie secured his election to the Legislature for the purpose of advocating submission 
to the authority of the general government. Before he had taken his seat, his life 
came to a close. 

Mr. Henry was a devoted Christian and lived a life consistent with that high 
profession. His services to the cause of civil liberty can hardly be overstated. His 
powers have been testified to by many men of great culture and ability, and John 
Randolph, of Roanoke, declared that he was the greatest orator that ever lived 
and spoke of him as “ Shakespeare and Garrick combined.” 


-♦o*- 




RESISTANCE TO BRITISH AGGRESSION. 

Delivered before the Virginia Convention, March 21, 1775, in support of resolutions he had introduced, 
providing that the colony should immediately be put in a state of defence against British aggression. Of 
the effect of this speech, Mr. Wirt says, that, when Henry took his seat, at its close, “No murmur of 
applause was heard. The effect was too deep. After the trance of a moment, several members started 
from their seats. The cry to arms! seemed to quiver on every lip, and gleam from every eye. They 
became impatient of speech. Their souls were on fire for action.” 


R. PRESIDENT, it is natural to man to 
indulge in the illusions of hope. We are 
apt to shut our eyes against a painful 
truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she 
transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise 
men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for 
liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of 
those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, 
hear not, the things which so nearly concern our 
temporal salvation ? For my part, whatever anguish 
of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole 
truth,—to know the worst, and to provide for it! 

I have but one lamp, by which my feet are guided ; 
and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no 
way of judging of the future but by the past. And, 
judging by the past, I wish to know what there has 
been in the conduct of the British ministry, for the 


last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gen¬ 
tlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and 
the House ? Is it that insidious smile with which 
our petition has been lately received ? Trust it not, 
sir; it will prove a snare to your feet! Suffer not 
yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss ! Ask yourselves 
how this gracious reception of our petition comports 
with those warlike preparations which cover our 
waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies 
necessary to a work of love and reconciliation ? Have 
we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that 
force must be called in to win back our love ? 

Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the 
implements of war and subjugation,—the last argu¬ 
ments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, 
what means this martial array, if its purpose be not 
to force us to submission ? Can gentlemen assign any 











PATRICK HENRY. 


435 


other possible motive for it ? Has Great Britain any 
enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this 
accumulation of navies and armies ? No, sir, she has 
none. They are meant for us; they can be meant 
for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet 
upon us those chains which the British ministry have 
been so long forging. And what have we to oppose 
to them ? Shall we try argument ? Sir, we have 
been trying that, for the last ten years. Have we 
anything new to offer upon the subject ? Nothing. 
We have held the subject up in every light of which 
it is capable; but it has been all in vain. 

Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplica¬ 
tion ? What terms shall we find which have not 
already been exhausted ? Let us not, I beseech you, 
sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done 
everything that could be done, to avert the storm 
which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we 
have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have 


prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have im¬ 
plored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands 
of the Ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have 
been slighted, our remonstrances have produced addi¬ 
tional violence and insult, our supplications have been 
disregarded, and we have been spurned, with contempt, 
from the foot of the throne. 

In vain, after these things, may we indulge the 
fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no 
longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free,— 
if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable 
privileges for which we have been so long contend¬ 
ing,—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble 
struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and 
which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon 
until the glorious object of our contest shall be ob¬ 
tained,—we must fight; I repeat it, sir, we must 
fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of Hosts, 
is all that is left us! 


-- 

THE WAR INEVITABLE, MARCH, 1775. 

(Continuation of the foregoing.) 


HEY tell us, sir, that we are weak,—unable 
to cope with so formidable an adversary. 
But when shall we be stronger? Will it 
be the next week, or the next year ? Will it be 
when we are totally disarmed, and when a British 
guard shall be stationed in every house ? Shall we 
gather strength by irresolution and inaction ? Shall 
we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying 
supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive 
phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound 
us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make 
a proper use of those means which the God of nature 
hath placed in our power. 

Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause 
of liberty, and in such a country as that which we 
possess, are invincible by anv force which our enemy 
can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight 
our battles alone. There is a just God who presides 
over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up 
friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is 


not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the 
active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. 
If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too 
late to retire from the contest.' There is no retreat 
but in submission and slavery ! Our chains are forged ! 
Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston ! 
The war is inevitable; and let it come ! I repeat it, 
sir, let it come ! 

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentle¬ 
men may cry, peace, peace !—but there is no peace. 
The war is actually begun! The next gale that 
sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the 
clash of resounding arms ! Our brethren are already 
in the field ! Why stand we here idle ? What is it 
that gentlemen wish ? What would they have ? Is 
life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at 
the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty 
God ! I know not what course others may take ; but 
as for me, give me liberty or give me death ! 















HENRY CLAY. 

“ THE GREAT PACIFICATOR.” 

is impossible within the necessary limits of this article to give 
anything like a satisfactory account of the life and services of 
the “ Great Pacificator.” For nearly fifty years he took a promi¬ 
nent part in the discussion of every public question. In a time 
whose dangers and difficulties were so great that the most far-seeing 
statesmen almost despaired of the future of our country, it was to 
Henry Clay that all eyes were turned, and it was to him that we owe the post¬ 
ponement of the great conflict of 1861 almost for a generation. 

Clay was a native of Hanover County, Virginia; born in 1777. His father 
dying when he was four years old, the future statesman lived a life of great 
hardship, toil and poverty. He had almost no education, and at fourteen he was 
placed in a drug store in Richmond, where he served for a year as errand boy. His 
mother having remarried, her husband obtained for Henry a clerkship in the office 
of the Court of Chancery. While here he studied law, and, believing that his 
chances of success would be better in the West, he followed his mother and step- 
father to Kentucky, and opened an office in Lexington. His success was immediate, 
and he was soon possessed of a lucrative practice and of a position of great 
influence. 

In 1799 Clay married Miss Lucretia Hart, the daughter of a gentleman of prom¬ 
inent standing in the State. His prosperity rapidly increased, and he was soon 
able to purchase “ Ashland,” an estate of some six hundred acres near Lexington, 
which afterwards became famous as the home of Henry Clay. In 1806 Mr. Clay 
was elected to fill a vacancy in the Senate of the United States. Returning to 
Kentucky, he became a member of the Kentucky Legislature, where he took a leading 
part. Again, in 1809, he was sent to the United States Senate, but it may be said 
that his public life properly began in 1811 as a member of the House of Repre¬ 
sentatives. He was immediately elected Speaker, and so distinguished himself in 
that office that it is sometimes said that he was the best presiding officer that any 
deliberative body in America has ever known, even down to the present time. It 
was to him more than to any other individual that we owe the War of 1812, and 
when President Madison, discouraged at the failures of the National armies in the 
first year of that war, was about to appoint Clay commander-in-chief of the land 
forces, he was persuaded not to do so because he could not be spared from the House 
of Representatives. In 1814 Mr. Clay was one of the commissioners to arrange 

* 436 



r P 



















































HENRY CLAY. 


437 


the terms of peace with England. Returning from Europe, he remained Speaker 
ot the House ot Representatives until 1825, when he became Secretary of State 
under John Quincy Adams. During this time the great conflict over slavery began. 
The introduction of the cotton-gin had made slavery profitable, and the sentiment 
of the South, which at the time of the Revolutionary War had apparently favored 
the gradual doing away with that system, now insisted upon its extension; but while 
Southern sentiment had progressed in this way, the feelings of the North had grown 
in the opposite direction, and the increasing importance of the North and its 
approaching predominance in the government, made Southern politicians anxious 
about the future of their peculiar institution. The conflict broke forth in 1818, 
when Missouri asked to be admitted to the Union. “ It was,” said Thomas Jefferson, 
describing the suddenness with which the danger appeared, “like the ringing of a 
fire-bell in the night.” It was the most dangerous crisis which had yet occurred in 
the history of the government. It was to the genius of Henry Clay that the ship 
of State was successfully steered out of these waters. The famous “ Missouri Com¬ 
promise” admitting one free State—Maine—and one slave State—Missouri—at the 
same time and enacting that no other slave State should be formed north of latitude 
thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, ivliich was the southern boundary line of Missouri, 
seemed likely to solve the difficult question, and certainly postponed the conflict. 

The disappointment of Henry Clay’s life was his failure to be elected President. 
He was a candidate in 1824, but with little hope of success, and when his party, in 
1840, found conditions favorable for the election of their candidate, the popularity 
of General Jackson had convinced the party managers that success demanded a 
military hero as a candidate, and accordingly General Harrison took the place 
which belonged by right to Clay. When he was again nominated, 1844, the slavery 
question had again assumed so dangerous a form that it prevented his election. He 
was a slave-holder, and so could not receive the votes of the Liberty Party; he was 
opposed to the extension of slavery, and, therefore, not satisfactory to the South. 
Although the situation was evident to the party managers, a large majority of the 
people expected Clay to be elected, and when the news of his defeat came the 
public sorrow was greater than has ever been manifested for such a cause. 

Returning to the Senate, Mr. Clay completed his public services by accomplish 
ing the famous “ Compromise of 1850,” which is believed to have postponed for ten 
years the Civil War. He was now an old man, but his labors for the preservation 
of the Union were untiring. On the morning when he began the great speech of 
that session, he was so weak that he had to be assisted to climb the steps of the 
Capitol. He was aware that the exertion would probably shorten his life; but under 
the fear that if he did not complete the speech at that time he would never be able to 
resume it, he determined to continue. He spoke for two days with the force, pathos 
and the grandeur possible only to the greatest orators. The underlying thought 
of his speech was the unity of the nation and the paramount allegiance owed by 
her citizens, not to a single State; but to the country. Although he lived two 
years longer, he never recovered from the effort. 

Probably no man was ever more fondly loved, probably no man was so nearly 
worshipped. An Englishwoman, traveling in America, in 1844, wrote that three- 
quarters of all the boys born in that year must have been named Henry Clay. 


438 


HENRY CLAY. 


“Whatever Clay’s weakness of character and errors in statesmanship may have 
been,” says Carl Schurz, “almost everything he said or did was illumined by a 
grand conception of the destinies of his country, a glowing national spirit, a lofty 
patriotism.” It was a just judgment which he pronounced upon himself when he 
wrote, “If anyone desires to know the leading and paramount object of my public 
life, the preservation of the Union will furnish him the key.” 


-•<>+- 


DEFENCE OF JEFFERSON, 181 


3. 



EXT to the notice which the opposition has 
found itself called upon to bestow upon the 
French emperor, a distinguished citizen of 
Virginia, formerly President of the United States, has 
never for a moment failed to receive their kindest and 
most respectful attention. An honorable gentleman 
from Massachusetts, of whom I am sorry to say, it 
becomes necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, 
to take some notice, has alluded to him in a remark¬ 
able manner. Neither his retirement from public 
office, his eminent services, nor his advanced age, can 
exempt this patriot from the coarse assaults of party 
malevolence. No, sir! In 1801, he snatched from 
the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution 
of his country,—and that is his crime. He preserved 
that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a 
precious inheritance for generations to come, and for 
this he can never be forgiven. How vain and impo¬ 
tent is party rage, directed against such a man ! He 


is not more elevated by his lofty residence, upon the 
summit of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, 
by the serenity of his mind and the consciousness of a 
well-spent life, above the malignant passions and bitter 
feelings of the day. No ! his own beloved Monticello 
is not less moved by the storms that beat against its 
sides, than is this illustrious man, by the howlings of 
the whole British pack, let loose from the Essex ken¬ 
nel. When the gentleman to whom I have been 
compelled to allude shall have mingled his dust with 
that of his abused ancestors,—when he shall have been 

consigned to oblivion, or, if he lives at all, shall live 
only in the treasonable annals of a certain junto,— 

the name of Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude, 

his memorv honored and cherished as the second foun- 
%/ 

der of the liberties of the people, and the period of 
his administration will be looked back to as one of 
the happiest and brightest epochs in American 
history! 




REPLY TO JOHN RANDOLPH. 

(from speech in the house of representatives, 1834.) 



IR, I am growing old. I have had some lit¬ 
tle measure of experience in public life, 
and the result of that experience has 
brought me to this conclusion, that when business, of 
whatever nature, is to be transacted in a deliberate 
assembly, or in private life, courtesy, forbearance, and 
moderation, are best calculated to bring it to a suc¬ 
cessful conclusion. Sir, my age admonishes me to 
abstain from involving myself in personal difficulties; 
would to God that I could say, I am also restrained 
by higher motives. I certainly never sought any col¬ 
lision with the gentleman from Virginia. My situa¬ 
tion at this time is peculiar, if it be nothing else, and 
might, I should think, dissuade, at least, a generous 


heart from any wish to draw me into circumstances 
of personal altercation. I have experienced this mag¬ 
nanimity from some quarters of the House. But I 
regret that from others it appears to have no such 
consideration. 

The gentleman from Virginia was pleased to say 
that in one point, at least, he coincided with me—in 
an humble estimate of my grammatical and philologi¬ 
cal acquirements. I know my deficiencies. I was 
born to no proud patrimonial estate; from my father 
I inherited only infancy, ignorance, and indigence. 
I feel my defects ; but, so far as my situation in early 
life is concerned, I may, without presumption, say 
they are more my misfortune than my fault. But, 


















HENRY CLAY. 


439 


however, I regret my want of ability to furnish to the 
gentleman a better specimen of powers of verbal criti¬ 
cism, I will venture to say, it is not greater than the 
disappointment of this committee as to the strength 
of his argument. It is not a few abstractions en¬ 
grossed on parchment, that make free governments. 
No, sir; the law of liberty must be inscribed on the 
heart of the citizen: the word, if I must use the 
expression without irreverence, must become flesh. 
You must have a whole people trained, disciplined, 
bred,—yea, and born,—as our fathers were, to insti¬ 
tutions like ours. 

Before the Colonies existed, the Petition of Rights, 


that Magna Charta of a more enlightened age, had 
been presented, in 1628, by Lord Coke and his im¬ 
mortal compeers. Our founders brought it with them, 
and we have not gone one step beyond them. They 
brought these maxims of civil liberty, not in their 
libraries, but in their souls; not as philosophical 
prattle, not as barren generalities, but as rules of con¬ 
duct ; as a symbol of public duty and private right, 
to be adhered to with religious fidelity; and the very 
first pilgrim that set his foot upon the rock of Plym¬ 
outh stepped forth a living constitution, armed 
at all points to defend and to perpetuate the liberty to 
which he had devoted his whole being. 


-*o+- 


ON RECOGNIZING THE INDEPENDENCE OF GREECE, 1824. 



RE we so low, so base, so despicable, that we 
may not express our horror, articulate our 
detestation, of the most brutal and atro¬ 
cious war that ever stained the earth, or shocked high 
Heaven, with the ferocious deeds of a brutal soldiery, 
set on by the clergy and followers of a fanatical and 
inimical religion, rioting in excess of blood and butch- 
ery, at the mere details of which the heart sickens; 
if the great mass of Christendom can look coolly and 
calmly on, while all this is perpetuated on a Christian 
people, in their own vicinity, in their very presence, 
let us, at least, show that, in this distant extremity, 
there is still some sensibility and sympathy for Chris¬ 
tian wrongs and sufferings ; that there are still feelings 
which can kindle into indignation at the oppression of 
a people endeared to us by every ancient recollection, 
and every modern tie. 

But, sir, it is not first and chiefly for Greece that I 
wish to see this measure adopted. It will give them 
but little aid,—that aid purely of a moral kind. It is, 
indeed, soothing and solacing, in distress, to hear the 
accents of a friendly voice. We know this as a Peo¬ 
ple. But, sir, it is principally and mainly for America 
herself, for the credit and character of our common 
country, that I hope to see this resolution pass; it is 
for our own unsullied name that I feel. 

What appearance, sir, on the page of history, would 
a record like this make:—“ In the month of January 
in the year of our Lord and Saviour 1824, while all 
European Christendom beheld with cold, unfeeling 
apathy the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible mis¬ 
ery of Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the 


Congress of the United States,—almost the sole, the 
last, the greatest repository of human hope and of 
human freedom, the representatives of a nation capa¬ 
ble of bringing into the field a million of bayonets,— 
while the freemen of that nation were spontaneously 
expressing its deep-toned feeling, its fervent prayer 
for Grecian success; while the whole Continent was 
rising, by one simultaneous motion, solemnly and anx¬ 
iously supplicating and invoking the aid of Heaven to 
spare Greece, and to invigorate her arms; while tem¬ 
ples and senate-houses will be resounding with one 
burst of generous sympathy;—in the year of our 
Lord and Saviour,—that Saviour alike of Christian 
Greece and of us, a proposition was offered in the 
American Congress to send a messenger to Greece, 
to inquire into her state and condition, with an ex¬ 
pression of our good wishes and our sympathies;— 
and it was rejected ! ” 

Go home, if you dare,—go home, if you can,—to 
your constituents, and tell them that you voted it 
down ! Meet, if you dare, the appalling countenances 
of those who sent you here, and tell them that you 
shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments; 
that, you cannot tell how, but that some unknown 
dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefin¬ 
able danger, affrighted you ; that the spectres of scim¬ 
itars and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you, 
and alarmed you; and that you suppressed all the 
noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by 
national independence, and by humanity ! I cannot 
bring myself to believe that such will be the feeling 
of a majority of this House. 











M 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 


THE DEFENDER OF NATIONAL UNION. 



MONG the men who may properly be called the makers of the nation, 
Daniel Webster holds a foremost place. If Washington was “the 
father of liis country,” and Lincoln its “ saviour, ” it may also be 
said that it was Webster, more than any other one man, who laid 
down the principles upon which it w r as made possible for the nation 
to endure ; for it was he who maintained that the Federal Constitu¬ 
tion created not a league, but a nation, thus enunciating far in advance the theories 
which were wrought into our constitutional law at the expense of a long and bloodv 
Civil War. 

The life of Daniel Webster extended from 1782 until 1852. His father was one 
of the brave men who fought at Lexington, and Daniel was the youngest of ten 
children who were compelled very early in life to share in the labor of supporting 
the family on a rocky New Hampshire farm. Working in his father’s sawmill, he 
used the time while the saw was going through the log in devouring a book. His 
abilities were very remarkable and the fame of “Webster’s boy” was known far 
and wide. His memory was very extraordinary. In a competition between the 
boys of his school in committing to memory verses in the Bible, the teacher heard 
him repeat some sixty or seventy which he had committed between Saturday and 
Monday and was then obliged to give up as Webster declared that there were several 
chapters more that he had learned. By means of great sacrifice on the part of the 
entire family, Daniel was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy, and, by teaching school 
in vacations, made his way through Dartmouth College. He took up the study of 
law and was admitted to practice in 1805. 

There was something in Mr. Webster’s appearance and bearing which must have 
been very majestic. He seemed to everyone to be a giant; but as his proportions 
were not those of an unusually large man, his majestic appearance must have been 
due to something within which shone out through his piercing eyes and spoke in his 
finely cut and noble features. It is said that he never punished his children, but, 
when they did wrong, he would send for them and silently look at them, and the 
sorrow or the anger of the look was reproach enough. 

Webster was a lawyer, an orator and a statesman. As a lawyer, his most famous 
arguments are those in the “ Dartmouth College Case,” the “ White Murder Case ” 
and the “ Steamboat Case,” as they are called. A part of his speech in the “ Murder 
Case ” is still printed in the school readers. The “ Dartmouth College Case ” is 

440 





























DANIEL WEBSTER. 


441 


very famous. It was a suit whose success would have destroyed the college, and, 
after trial in the State Courts, it was appealed to the United States Supreme Court' 
before which Mr. Webster made his argument. The interest was very great and 
the details of the trial are among the most interesting in the history of our juris¬ 
prudence. The eloquence with which Mr. Webster described the usefulness of the 
institution, his love for it, and the consequences which the precedent sought to be 
established would involve, all contributed to make this one of the greatest oratorical 
efforts of which we have any record. 

“ Sir,” said he, “ you may destroy this little institution ; it is weak; it is in your 
hands ! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. 
You may put it out, but, if you do so, you must carry through your work ! You 



must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more 
than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land. 

“ It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who love 

it-” 

Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down broke forth. 
His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion ; his eyes were filled with 
tears ; his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the utmost simply to gain that 
mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling. 

The court room, during these two or three minutes, presented an extraordinary 
spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall, gaunt figure bent over as if to 
catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheeks expanded with emotion, 
and eyes suffused with tears; Mr. Justice Washington at his side, with his small 
and emaciated frame, and countenance like marble, leaning forward with an eager, 
troubled look ; and the remainder of the court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it 




















442 


DANIEL WEBSTER. 




were, toward a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves 
round in closer folds beneath the bench to catch each look, and every movement of 
the speaker’s face. If the painter could give us the scene on canvas—those forms 
and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst—it would be one 
of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. 

As an orator, Mr. Webster’s most famous speeches are the “ Plymouth Pock 
Address” in 1820, on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Landing of the 
Pilgrims, the “ Bunker Hill Monument Address,” and his speech in the Senate in 
reply to Hayne in 1830, and on “ Clay’s Compromise Bill of 1850.” 

Upon Mr. Harrison’s inauguration in 1841, Mr. Webster became Secretary of 
State, which office he held until 1843. During this time, he negotiated the famous 
treaty with Lord Ashburton which settled a long-standing dispute with England 
over the boundary of Maine. He supported Clay for the presidency in 1804 and 
opposed the annexation of Texas. In the debate on the “ Compromise of 1850,” 
Mr. Webster advocated the acceptance of the provisions for extending slavery into 
the territory purchased from Mexico, and for the “Fugitive Slave Law,” and in so 
doing gave great offense to his supporters in the North. In 1850, he was appointed 
Secretary of State, which office he held until his death. 

He took great interest in the operations of his farm at Marshfield, near Plymouth, 
Massachusetts, and delightful stories are told of the pleasure lie took in his cattle— 
how he might be seen breaking ears of corn to feed to his oxen on the right and 
left declaring that he would rather be there than in the Senate, and adding with a 
smile, “ I think it better company.” It was here, in 1852, that he was thrown from 
his carriage and received severe injuries from which he did not recover. In his last 
words, he manifested a desire to be conscious of the approach of death and his last 
words were, “ I still live.” In the vast concourse which gathered at his funeral was 
a plain farmer who was heard to say, as he turned from the grave, “ Daniel Webster, 
without you the world will seem lonely.” 


SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS, JANUARY, 1830. 


An extract from a speech by Mr. Webster, in reply to Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, in the Senate of the 
United States, January, 1830. This was probably the most remarkable speech ever made in the American 
Congress. His peroration, comprised in the last paragraph, under the succeeding heading, “Union and 
Liberty,” for patriotic eloquence has not a counterpart, perhaps, in all historyA The speech is the more 
remarkable for the fact that Mr. Webster had but a single night in which to make preparation. 


HE eulogium pronounced on the character 
of the State of South Carolina, by the 
honorable gentleman, for her Revolutionary 
and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I 
shall not acknowledge that the honorable member 
goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished 
talent or distinguished character South Carolina has 
produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in 
the pride of her great names. I claim them for 
countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses, the Rut¬ 
ledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions,— 



Americans all,—whose fame is no more to be hemmed 
in by State lines, than their talents and patriotism 
were capable of being circumscribed within the same 
narrow limits. In their day and generation, they 
served and honored the country, and the whole coun¬ 
try ; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole 
country. Him whose honored name the gentleman 
himself bears,—does he suppose me less capable of 
gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his suf¬ 
ferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the 
light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? 
















DANIEL WEBSTER. 


443 


Sir, does he suppose it is in his power to exhibit a 
Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in 
my bosom? No, sir; increased gratification and 
delight, rather. 

Sir, I thank God, that, if I am gifted with little of 
the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to 
the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other 
spirit, which would drag angels down. When I shall 
be found, sir, in my place here, in the Senate, or else¬ 
where, to sneer at public merit, because it happened 
to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State 
or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, 
or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, 
to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty 
and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endow¬ 
ment of heaven,—if I see extraordinary capacity and 
virtue in any son of the South,—and if, moved by 
local prejudice, or gangrened by State jealousy, I get 
up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just 
character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the 
roof of my mouth ! 

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me 
indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let 
me remind you that, in early times, no States cher¬ 
ished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, 
than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to 
God that harmony might again return ! Shoulder to 
shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand in 
hand they stood round the administration of Wash¬ 
ington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for 


support. Unkind feeling, if it exist,—alienation and 
distrust,—are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of 
false principles since sown. They are weeds, the 
seeds of which that same great arm never 
scattered. 

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon 
Massachusetts;—she needs none. There she is,— 
behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her 
history,—the world knows it by heart. The past, at 
least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and 
Lexington, and Bunker Hill,—and there they will 
remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the 
great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled 
with the soil of every State from New England to 
Georgia,—and there they will lie forever. And, sir, 
where American liberty raised its first voice, and 
where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it 
still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of 
its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall 
wound it,—if party strife and blind ambition shall 
hawk at and tear it,—if folly and madness, if uneasi¬ 
ness under salutary and necessary restraints, shall suc¬ 
ceed to separate it from that Union by which alone its 
existence is made sure,—it will stand, in the end, by 
the side of that cradle in which its infancy was 
rocked; it will stretch forth its arm, with whatever 
vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather 
round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, 
amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and 
on the very spot of its origin ! 


* 0 * 


LIBERTY AND UNION, 1830. 
(Continuation of the foregoing.) 


PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to 
have kept steadily in view the prosperity 
and honor of the whole country, and the 
preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that 
Union we owe our safety at home, and our considera¬ 
tion and dignity abroad. It is to that Union we are 
chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud 
of our country. That Union we reached only by 
the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of 
adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of 
disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined 
credit. Under its benign influences, these great 
interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and 


sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of 
its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its 
utility and its blessings; and although our territory 
has stretched out wider and wider, and our population 
spread further and further, they have not outrun its 
protection, or its benefits. It has been to us all a 
copious fountain of national, social, personal happiness. 

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the 
Union to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess 
behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of 
preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us 
together shall be broken asunder. I have not accus¬ 
tomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, 









444 


DANIEL WEBSTER. 


to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom 
the depth of the abyss below ; nor could I regard him 
as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government 
whose thoughts should be mainly bent on consider¬ 
ing, not how the Union should be best preserved, but 
how tolerable might be the condition of the people 
when it shall be broken up and destroyed. 

While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, 
gratifying prospects spread out before us and our 
children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the 
veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain 
may not rise! God grant that on my vision never 
may be opened what lies behind ! When my eyes 
shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the Sun 
in Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken 
and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; 
on States severed, discordant, belligerent; on a land 


rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fra¬ 
ternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering 
glance, rather, behold the gorgeous Ensign of the 
Republic, now known and honored throughout the 
earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies 
streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased 
or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing, for its 
motto, no such miserable interrogatory as —What is 
all this worth ?—nor those other words of delusion 
and folly —Liberty first and Union afterwards ,— 
but everywhere, spread all over in characters of 
living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they 
float over the sea and over the land, and in every 
wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, 
dear to every true American heart, Liberty and 
Union, now and forver, one and inseparable! 


THE ELOQUENCE OF ACTION. 


HEN public bodies are to be addressed on 
momentous occasions, when great interests 
are at stake and strong passions excited, 
nothing is valuable in speech, further than it is con¬ 
nected with high intellectual and moral endowments. 
Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities 
which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, 
does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought 
from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but 
they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be 
marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass 
it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in 
the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression 
the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it,-— 
they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like 
the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the 
bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous^ 



original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, 
the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of 
speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives, 
and the fate of their wives, their children, and their 
country hang on the decision of the hour. Then, 
words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all 
elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself 
then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence 
of higher "qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; 
then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, 
outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, 
the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the 
tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every fea¬ 
ture, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, 
to his object,—this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is 
something greater and higher than all eloquence,—it 
is action, noble, sublime, godlike action. 



THE TWENTY-SECOND OF FEBRUARY. 

(suited to Washington’s birthday celebration.) 

ENTLEMEN, a most auspicious omen salutes country is this day redolent of his principles,—the 
and cheers us this day. This day is the hills, the rocks, the groves, the vales, and the rivers 


anniversary of the birth of Washington. 
Washington’s birthday is celebrated from one end of 
this land to the other. The whole atmosphere of the 


shout their praises and resound with his fame. xVll 
the good, whether learned or unlearned, high or low, 
rich or poor, feel this day that there is one treasure 
















DANIEL WEBSTER. 


445 


common to them all; and that is the fame of Wash¬ 
ington. They all recount his deeds, ponder over his 
principles and teachings, and resolve to be more and 
more guided by them in the future. 

To the old and the young, to all born in this land; 
and to all whose preferences have led them to make 
it the home of their adoption, Washington is an ex¬ 
hilarating theme. Americans are proud of his char¬ 
acter ; all exiles from foreign shores are eager to 
participate in admiration of him; and it is true that 
he is, this day, here, everywhere, all over the world, 
more an object of regard than on any former day 
since his birth. 

Gentlemen, by his example, and under the guidance 


of his precepts, will we and our children uphold the 
Constitution ? Under his military leadership, our 
fathers conquered their ancient enemies; and, under 
the outspread banner of the political and constitutional 
principles, will we conquer now ? To that standard 
we shall adhere, and uphold it, through evil report 
and good report. A\ e will sustain it, and meet death 
itself, if it come; we will ever encounter and defeat 
error, by day and by night, in light or in darkness— 
thick darkness—if it come, till 

“ Danger’s troubled night is o’er, 

And the star of peace return.” 


-*<>♦- 


AMERICA’S GIFTS TO EUROPE. 


MERICA has furnished to Europe proof of 
the fact that popular institutions, founded 
on equality and the principle of represen¬ 
tation, are capable of maintaining governments, able 
to secure the rights of person, property, and reputa¬ 
tion. America has proved that it is practicable to 
elevate the mass of mankind—that portion which in 
Europe is called the laboring or lower class—to raise 
them to self-respect, to make them competent to act 
a part in the great right and great duty of self-gov¬ 
ernment ; and she has proved that this may be done 
by education and the diffusion of knowledge. She 
holds out an example, a thousand times more encour¬ 
aging than ever was presented before, to those nine- 
tenths of tlie human race who are born without 
hereditary fortune or hereditary rank. 

America has furnished to the world the character 



of Washington ; and if our American institutions had 
done nothing else, that alone would have entitled 
them to the respect of mankind. Washington! 
“ First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts 
of his countrymen,” Washington is all our own! 
The enthusiastic veneration and regard in which 
the people of the United States hold him, prove 
them to be worthy of such a country, while his 
reputation abroad reflects the highest honor on his 
country. 

I would cheerfully put the question to-day to the 
intelligence of Europe and the world, “ What charac¬ 
ter of the century, upon the whole, stands out, in the 
relief of history, most pure, most respectable, most 
sublime?” and I doubt not that, by a suffrage 
approaching to unanimity, the answer would be, 
W ashington! 

















EDWARD EVERETT. 

THE GREAT CLASSIC ORATOR OF NEW ENGLAND. 

EORGE S. HILLARD, himself an orator of no slight renown, has 
spoken with much critical insight and appreciation of the mental 
characteristic and oratorical style of Edward Everett, the great classic 
orator of Massachusetts : “ The great charm of Mr. Everett’s orations 
consists not so much in any single and strongly developed intellectual 
trait as in that symmetry and finish which, on every page, give token to 
the richly endowed and thorough scholar. The natural movements of his mind are 
full of grace; and the most indifferent sentence which falls from his pen has that simple 
elegance which it is as difficult to define as it is easy to perceive. His style, with 
matchless flexibility, rises and falls with his subject and is alternately easy, vivid, 
elevated, ornamented, picturesque, adpating itself to the dominant mood of the mind, 
as an instrument responds to the touch of a master’s hand. His knowledge is so 
extensive and the field of his allusion so wide, that the most familiar views, in 
passing through his hands, gather such a halo of luminous illustrations that their 
likeness seems transformed, and we entertain doubts of their identity.” 

He was born in Dorchester, Mass., April 11, 1794, and was graduated from 
Harvard College with the highest honors in 1811. He entered the ministry, and 
at the age of nineteen he was installed as pastor of the Unitarian Church in Brattle 
Square, Boston, and only six years later he preached a sermon in the Hall of 
Representatives at Washington, which made a marvelous impression on all who 
heard it, and won him great fame for eloquence. 

He was chosen at the age of twenty to fill the Chair of Greek Literature at 
Harvard College, and he spent four years abroad to qualify himself for this position, 
and Victor Cousin said of him at this period that he was one of the best Grecians 
he ever knew. 

In 1820, crowded with honors and distinguished in many fields, he became editor 
of the “North American Review;” during the four years of his editorship he 
contributed fifty articles to this magazine. 

He sat in Congress as Representative from Massachusetts from 1824 to 1834. In 
1835, and for three years following, he was Governor of Massachusetts, and in the 
election following he was defeated by one vote. 

While traveling abroad he received the appointment as Minister to England, and 
during this period of sojourn he received from Oxford the degree of D. C. L., and 
from Cambridge and Dublin that of LL. D. 

446 

































EDWARD EVERETT. 


447 


For three years, from 1846 to 1849, lie was President of Harvard College, and in 
1852 lie succeeded Daniel Webster as Secretary of State, becoming in the year 
following a member of the United States Senate, which position be filled with great 
dignity, and rendered bis country honorable service. It was largely through bis 
efforts that the money was raised to purchase Mount Vernon. For this purpose the 
great orator delivered one hundred and twenty-two times his oration on “ Washington,” 
from which more than $58,000 was realized, and he secured $10,000 from a series 
of articles in the New York “ Ledger.” 

His lecture on the “Early Days of Franklin,” and other lectures for charitable 
purposes, brought in no less than $90,000. 

His orations have been collected and published, and form one of the most remarkable 
collections of graceful and eloquent addresses ever produced in this country. They 
are as follows: “Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions” (Boston, 1836); 
“Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions from 1826 to 1850” (2 Vols., Boston, 
1850); “Orations and Speeches” (Boston, 1859). He is also the author of two 
stirring poems, “Alaric the Visigoth” and “Santa Croce.” 

Despite the fact that he and Daniel Webster were often on opposite sides of great 
questions and issues, and frequently crossed swords in the debate of the giants, they 
were life-long friends, and Mr. Webster wrote to him three months before the death 
of the former in the following touching words: “We now and then see stretching 
across the heavens a clear, blue, cerulean sky, with no cloud or mist or haze. And 
such appears to me our acquaintance from the time when I heard you for a week 
recite your lessons in the little schoolhouse in Short Street to the date hereof” 
[July 21, 1852]. 

In 1860, much against his will, Mr. Everett became the candidate for the Vice- 
Presidency on the ticket of the Constitutional-Union Party, which polled thirty- 
nine electoral votes. 

He died at his home in Boston, January 15, 1865. 


TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PEACE. 


HILE we act, sir, upon the maxim, “ In 
peace prepare for war,” let us also remem- 
i ber that the best preparation for war is 
peace. This swells your numbers; this augments 
your means ; this knits the sinews of your strength ; 
this covers you all over with a panoply of might. 
And, then, if war must come in a just cause, 
no foreign state—no, sir, not all combined can 
send forth an adversary that you need fear to 
encounter. 

But, sir, give us these twenty-five years of peace. 
I do believe, sir, that this coming quarter of a century 
is to be the most important in our whole history. I 
do beseech you to let us have these twenty-five years, 
at least, of peace. Let these fertile wastes be filled 
up with swarming millions; let this tide of emigration 



from Europe go on ; let the steamer, the canal, the 
railway, and especially let this great Pacific railway, 
subdue these mighty distances, and bring this vast 
extension into a span. 

Let us pay back the ingots of California gold with 
bars of Atlantic iron ; let agriculture clothe our vast 
wastes with waving plenty; let the industrial and 
mechanic arts erect their peaceful fortresses at the 
waterfalls ; and then, sir, in the train of this growing 
population, let the printing office, the lecture-room, 
the village schoolhouse, and the village church, be 
scattered over the country. And in these twenty- 
five years we shall exhibit a spectacle of national 
prosperity such as the world has never seen on so 
large a scale, and yet within the reach of a sober, 
practical contemplation. 












E 


448 



EDWARD EVERETT. 

THE FATHER OF THE REPUBLIC. 

0 be cold and breathless, to feel not and i heaven upon his cheek and the fire of liberty in his 


speak not—this is not the end of existence 
to the men who have breathed their spirits 
into the institutions of their country, who have 
stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, 
who have poured their heart’s blood into the channels 
of the public prosperity. 

Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred 
height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him 
—not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant 
heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving 
resplendent over the field of honor, with the rose of 


eye ' 

Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the 
shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in 
that cold and narrow house ? That which made these 
men, and men like these, cannot die. 

The hand that traced the charter of independence 
is, indeed, motionless ; the eloquent lips that sustained 
it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, 
resolved and maintained it, and which alone, to such 
men, make it life to live—these cannot expire. 


-•O*- 


THE LAND OF OUR FOREFATHERS. 



OR myself, I can truly say that, after my 
native land, I feel a tenderness and a 
reverence for that of my fathers. The 
pride I take in my own country makes me respect 
that from which we are sprung. The sound of my 
native language beyond the sea is a music to my ears 
beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness or 
Castilian majesty. 

I am not—I need not say I am not—the panegyrist 
of England. I am not dazzled by her riches nor 
awed by her power. The sceptre, the mitre and the 
coronet, stars, garters and ribbons, seem to me poor 
things for great men to contend for. 

But England is the cradle and the refuge of free 
principles, though often persecuted; the school of 


religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles 
through which it has passed; she holds the tombs 
of those who have reflected honor on all who speak 
the English tongue; she is the birthplace of our 
fathers, the home of the Pilgrims; it is these which 
I love and venerate in England. 

I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy 
and Greece did I not also feel it for a land like this. 
In an American it would seem to me degenerate and 
ungrateful to hang with passion upon the traces of 
Homer and Virgil, and follow without emotion the 
nearer and plainer footsteps of Shakespeare and 
Milton. I should think him cold in love for his native 
land who felt no melting in his heart for that other 
native country which holds the ashes of his forefathers. 
























WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

THE DEMOSTHENES OF AMERICA. 

O MORE majestic figure in the anti-slavery struggle for thirty years 
—1835 to 1865—appeared on the American rostrum than the “sil¬ 
very tongued orator,” Wendell Phillips. 

In 1830, William Lloyd Garrison wrote in the “Liberator,”—a 
journal founded primarily by the abolitionists for the sole purpose 
of freeing the slaves—“I will be as harsh as truth and as uncom¬ 
promising as justice. I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I 
will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.” But the abolitionists remained 
many years a small and despised faction, and, with all of Garrison’s determination, 
might never have amounted to anything had he not enlisted in his cause such men 
and masters as Wendell Phillips on the platform, Henry Ward Beecher in the pul¬ 
pit, Charles Sumner in the United States Senate, and Harriet Beecher Stowe among 
novelists. It was a great day of promise when such educated talent caught the 
spirit of Garrison’s zeal. 

In 1835, an angry pro-slavery mob dragged William Lloyd Garrison through the 
streets of Boston. A young man of twenty-four witnessed this cruel treatment and 
determined to abandon the practice of law and devote his life to the same cause. 
That man ,was Wendell Phillips. He first came into prominence by his impassioned 
address in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 1837, at an indignation meeting called to con¬ 
demn the killing of Lovejoy, at Alton, Illinois, while defending his anti-slavery 
newspaper office against a pro-slavery mob. The direct and impassioned eloquence 
of the orator on this occasion was the key-note to the forward movement toward the 
liberation of the black man. It was the bugle-blast which cheered the pioneers in 
the movement, and awoke the slumbering spirits in sympathy with it, but whose 
timid hopes had not dared to dream of its possible ultimate success. 

As Demosthenes aroused and fired the Athenians, so Phillips’ appeals carried like 
an avalanche everything before them. The only way to prevent liis influence was 
to prevent his speaking, and accordingly when he went to New York in 1847, there 
was such a prejudice against the abolitionists, and such a predominant pro-slavery 
sentiment, that he could not procure a hall in either of these cities in which to 
speak. Finally, Henry Ward Beecher, who had recently become pastor of Ply¬ 
mouth Church, prevailed upon his congregation to allow Phillips to address the 
people from their pulpit. 

From this memorable occasion Beecher, himself, it is said, became a flaming torch, 

449 



29 





























450 


WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



second only to Phillips in his efforts in the same cause, while Plymouth Congre¬ 
gation seconded him with all its mighty influence, a further account of which may 
be found under the treatment of Henry Ward Beecher in this volume. 

Wendell Phillips was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 29th day of November, 
1811, and died there February 2, 1884. His parents were prominent in Boston 
society, his father at one time being Mayor of the city. Phillips was educated at 
Harvard College, graduating in 1831, after which he studied law at Cambridge and 
was admitted to the bar in 1833; but his gift as an orator, in which lie is regarded 
as second only to Daniel Webster, and his overmastering zeal in the abolitionist 
movement, required so much of his time that he did little practice before the court. 
He was a most fascinating platform speaker outside of politics, and was in constant 
demand as a lecturer. His most celebrated addresses were “Toussaint l’Ouverture” 
and “ The Lost Arts,” the former being used as an argument of the native ability, 
intelligence, and possibility of progress on the part of the negro under proper 
opportunities. 

The eloquence of Phillips was impassioned and direct, but his manner was so 
pleasingly polished as not to give personal offence to his most antagonistic hearers, 
while his English was singularly pure and simple, and his delivery was characterized 
by a nervous sympathy that was peculiarly magnetic. 

Like most other great orators, Wendell Phillips has left behind him in literature 
only his public speeches and letters. One volume of these was published in Boston 
in 1862, another (largely a revision of the first, with additions to the same) in 1869. 


-♦o♦- 



POLITICAL 

LL hail, Public Opinion ! To be sure, it is 
a dangerous thing under which to live. It 
rules to-day in the desire to obey all kinds 
of laws, and takes your life. It rules again in the 
love of liberty, and rescues Sh&drach from Boston 
Court House. It rules to-morrow in the manhood of 
him who loads the musket to shoot down—God be 
praised!—the man-hunter Gorsuch. It rules in 
Syracuse, and the slave escapes to Canada. It is our 
interest to educate this people in humanity, and in 
deep reverence for the rights of the lowest and 
humblest individual that makes up our numbers. 
Each man here, in fact, holds his property and his 
life dependent on the constant presence of an agita¬ 
tion like this of anti-slavery. Eternal vigilance is the 
price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the 
many to the few. The manna of popular liberty 
must be gathered each day, or it is rotten. The 
living sap of to-day outgrows the dead rind of yester¬ 
day. The hand intrusted with power becomes, either 
from human depravity or esprit de corps , the neces¬ 
sary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight 


AGITATION. 

can the democrat in office be prevented from harden¬ 
ing into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can 
a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not 
to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity. 

All clouds, it is said, have sunshine behind them, 
and all evils have some good result; so slavery, by 
the necessity of its abolition, has saved the freedom 
of the white race from being melted in the luxury or 
buried beneath the gold of its own success. Never 
look, therefore, for an age when the people can be 
quiet and safe. At such times Despotism, like a 
shrouding mist, steals over the mirror of Freedom. 
The Dutch, a thousand years ago, built against the 
ocean their bulwarks of willow and mud. Do they 
trust to that? No. Each year the patient, indus¬ 
trious peasant gives so much time from the cultiva¬ 
tion of his soil and the care of his children to stop 
the breaks and replace the willow which insects have 
eaten, that he may keep the land his fathers rescued 
from the water, and bid defiance to the waves that 
roar above his head, as if demanding back the broad 
fields man has stolen from their realm. 











WENDELL PHILLIPS. 


451 


TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE. 

[Toussaint L’Ouverture. who has been pronounced one of the greatest statesmen and generals of the 
nineteenth century, saved his master and family by hurrying them on board a vessel at the insurrection 
ot the negroes of Hayti. He then joined the negro army, and soon found himself at their head. Napoleon 
sent a fleet with French veterans, with orders to -bring him to France at all hazards. But all the skill of 
tli el rencli soldiers could not subdue the negro army ; and they finally made a treaty, placing Toussaint 
L Ouvertuie governor ot the island. The negroes no sooner disbanded their armv, than a squad of soldiers 
seized ioussaint by night, and taking him on board a vessel, hurried him to France. There he was placed 
in a dungeon, and finally starved to death.] 1 



F I were to tell you the story of Napoleon ? 
I should take it from the lips of French, 
men, who find no language rich enough to 
paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. 
Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should 
take it from your hearts,—you, who think no mar¬ 
ble white enough on which to carve the name of the 
Father of his country. But I am to tell you the 
story of a negro, Toussaint L’Ouverture, who has 
left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from 
the reluctant testimony of his enemies, men who des¬ 
pised him because he was a negro and a slave, hated 
him because he had beaten them in battle. 

Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, 
at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head 
of the best troops Europe ever saw. Cromwell never 
saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a 
soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his 
own army—out of what? Englishmen,—the best 
blood in Europe. Out of the middle class of Eng¬ 
lishmen,—the best blood of the island. And with it 
he conquered' what ? Englishmen,—their equals. 
This man manufactured his army out of what ? Out 
of what you call the despicable race of negroes, 
debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, 
one hundred thousand of them imported into the 
island within four years, unable to speak a dialect 
intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this 
mixed, and, as you say, despicable mass he forged a 
thunderbolt and hurled it at w T hat? At the proudest j 
blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home 
conquered ; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the 
French, and put them under his feet; at the pluckiest 
blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked home 
to Jamaica. Now, if Cromwell was a general, at 
least this man was a soldier. 

Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go 
back with me to the commencement of the century, 
and select what statesman you please. Let him be 


either American or European; let him have a brain 
the result of six generations of culture ; let him have 
the ripest training of university routine ; let him add 
to it the better education of practical life ; crown his 
temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and 
show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his 
most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel, rich as 
embittered foes have placed on the brow of this 
negro,—rare military skill, profound knowledge of 
human nature, content to blot out all party distinc¬ 
tions, and trust a state to the blood of its sons,— 
anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking 
his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any 
Englishman or American had won the right; and yet 
this is the record which the history of rival States 
makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo. 

Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to 
Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves of 
the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what 
they think of the negro’s sword. 

I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his 
way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea 
of blood. This man never broke his word. I would 
call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, 
and the state he founded went down w r ith him into 
his grave. I would call him Washington, but the 
great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his 
empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the 
humblest village of his dominions. 

You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not 
with your eyes but with your prejudices. But fifty 
years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse 
of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus 
for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for 
France, choose Washington as the bright consummate 
flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her 
pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, 
above them all, the name of the soldier, the stateman, 
the martyr, Toussaint L’Ouverture. 












HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

THE GREATEST PULPIT ORATOR OF AMERICA. 

T may be safely said that as a pulpit and platform orator, Beecher has 
had no superior. Nothing is studied or artificial about his delivery. 
Naturalness, frankness, cordiality, fearlessness, clearness, and depth 
of thought, expressed in the simplicity and beauty of diction, and 
enlivened by a rich vein of pungent humor, were marked character¬ 
istics of his speech. 

Those familiar with the public career of this great orator and reformer can 
scarcely conceive of him at four years of age sitting in the Widow Kilbourn’s school 
occupied in saying his A B C’s twice a day, and putting in the intervals between 
recitations in hemming towels and aprons; yet such is the story told of Henry 
Ward Beecher’s first school-days. 

His father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was a Congregational minister, a profound 
thinker and scholar, stationed at Litchfield, Connecticut, where, on the then large 
salary of eight hundred dollars per year, he and his wife and ten children lived. 
Henry Ward was born on the 24th of June, 1813—the eighth child in the family. 

Beecher tells many interesting stories of his childhood. Among others are his 
accounts of the Sabbath-day struggles with the Catechism. He declared it was a 
day of terror. Once on referring to it in his Plymouth pulpit he said : “I think 
that to force childhood to associate religion with such dry morsels is to violate the 
spirit not only of the New Testament, but of common sense as well. I know one 
thing, that if I am lax and latitudinarian, the Sunday Catechism is to blame for 
part of it. The dinners I have lost because I could not go through ‘ sanctification,’ 
and ‘justification,’ and ‘ adoption,’ and all such questions, lie heavily on my memory. 
One Sunday afternoon with my Aunt Esther did me more good than forty Sunday 
mornings in church with my father. He thundered over my head. She sweetly 
instructed me down in my heart. The promise that she would read Joseph’s history 
to me on Sunday was enough to draw a silver thread through the entire week.” 

Dr. Beecher received a call to preach in Boston in 1825, and removed his family 
there. The ships, the sea, and the stories Beecher here saw and read of Lord Nelson 
and other naval heroes, and of Captain Cook’s marvelous voyages and discoveries in 
new countries, determined him to make a sailor of himself. He was at this time a shy 
boy with a thick tongue and very indistinct speech. His father, while secretly 

opposing his project to go to sea, apparently encouraged it by suggesting that he go 

452 





































HENRY WARD BEECHER. 


453 


to Amherst College, where he would learn mathematics and navigation, preparing 
himself to be a commander instead of a “common Jack Tar.” Henry Ward readily 
consented to this. 

At Amherst he studied elocution, and became not only an easy reader and talker, 
but showed promise of distinction. This opened a new world to him. The spirit 
of oratory found lodgment in his soul and he forgot his old longing for the sea. 
Shortly after this, during a religious revival in the college, Beecher determined to 
be a Christian, and, as a biographer says of him, “Made a joyful consecration of 
himself to the Lord. It was no doleful giving up to live a life of gloom and sadness. 
He believed that a Christian life ought to be of all lives the most joyful, and if he 
could not be a joyful Christian, he should not be one at all.” These convictions 
followed him through life. Mrs. Stowe, his sister, wrote of him : “ He was never 
found sitting in solemnized meditations in the depth of pine trees like the owl.” 

Dr. Beecher was elected President of Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1832, 
and removed to that city, whither Henry Ward followed him after graduation at 
Amherst in 1836, and took his theological course under his father and Prof. Stowe 
(who afterwards married his sister, Harriet Beecher, the author of “ Uncle Tom’s 
Ca‘bin ”). After completing his theological course he entered upon his first pastorate 
at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, at a salary of three hundred dollars per annum, where, 
he said: “I did all the work of both sexton and pastor; in fact, everything except 
come to hear myself preach—that much the congregation had to do.” 

One of his first steps after securing this position was to go back to Massachusetts 

and marry Miss-Bullard, his boyhood’s sweetheart, to whom he had been 

engaged for many years. The young couple started bravely in two rooms over a 
stable as their first home, and it is doubtful if any young prince and princess have 
been more truly happy than were these poor but true lovers in their humble nest in 
the stable loft. Mrs. Beecher’s “ Becollections of Henry Ward Beecher,” written 
just before her death in 1897, furnishes a most delightful description of these early 
days of privation and poverty, chills and ague, but withal of such cheerfulness we 
almost envy them. Space forbids that we dwell upon Beecher’s private life, inter¬ 
esting and inspiring as it was. From Lawrenceburg he went to Indianapolis, where 
he preached for eight years with great success and growing fame, until August 24, 
1847, when he was installed as pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, New York. 

From this point Beecher becomes a national figure, and until the day of his death 
—a period of forty years—he was ever prominent in the public eye. There was a 
time when the escutcheon of his moral character was sullied by scandal,—but it was 
only scandal—which he met boldly, his church standing by him, and before the 
most scrutinizing investigation he remained steadfast, and in time the world 
exonerated him—while his accuser fled to Paris, where he spent his life in exile. 
Few people in the world now believe Beecher was guilty of the charges Theodore 
Tilton brought against him. 

Beecher early espoused the cause of the abolition of slavery and of temperance. 
He considered both these doctrines a part of the gospel of Christ, and preached them 
boldly from his pulpit. Thus Plymouth Church rose grandly to the need of the 
age. Wendell Phillips, who in 1847 could find no audience room in New York or 
Brooklyn, was cordially invited to Beecher’s church, and “from the day that Phillips 





454 


HENRY WARD BEECHER. 


made his great anti-slavery speech from that pulpit until the Emancipation Procla¬ 
mation—nearly twenty years later—the Plymouth preacher became a flaming 
advocate for liberty of speech and action on the question of the national evil. If 
there was anything on earth to which he was sensitive up to the day of his death, 
it was any form of denial to liberty either in politics, religion, or literature.” With 
pen and voice he ceased not to labor until the shackles fell from the black man’s 
hands. 

A number of slaves were sold from Plymouth pulpit, purchased by public contribu¬ 
tions and given their liberty, Mr. Beecher himself acting as auctioneer. The dramatic 
scenes on such occasions have been vividly recounted in Mrs. Beecher’s “Becol- 
lections,” and some of Mr. Beecher’s auction speeches have been preserved. 

When Fort Sumter’s guns announced the beginning of war, Beecher sent back 
the echo from Plymouth pulpit in no uncertain sounds. His church organized and 
equipped a regiment which lie was pleased to call “ My own boys.” Mr. Beecher 
was in such constant demand as a public speaker that early in 1862 his voice failed 
and his health gave way, and he went to Europe and traveled in France and 
Switzerland. On invitation, after regaining his health, he went to England, where 
he delivered speeches—though England was in sympathy with the South—at 
Manchester, Glasgow, London and Edinburgh, The opposition which he met in 
these efforts would have completely overcome a man of less rugged physique, or 
discouraged one of less imperious will. But Beecher—confident in his own mind 
that he was right and his soul afire with patriotism—faced, spoke to, and quieted 
the most vicious and howling mobs into which he went often at personal peril. He 
describes his experiences as being 14 like driving a team of runaway horses and 
making love to a lady at the same time.” 

After the war was over, Beecher preached as earnestly for forgiveness and recon¬ 
ciliation toward the South as he had preached to abolish slavery and retain the 
Southern States in the Union. His actions throughout had been purely patriotic 
and from no hatred of the people whose institution of slavery he fought. These 
principles made him unpopular for a time at the North and even in his own church. 
But he was ever the champion of the right, and did much toward the restoration of 
harmony between the sections. He delivered the oration at Charleston, South 
Carolina, in 1865, when the flag of the Union was again raised over Fort Sumter, 
and in 1879 made a tour of the Southern States, delivering lectures on popular 
topics, one of which was entitled “The Reign of the Common People.” 

Henry Ward Beecher died March 8, 1887. He retired on the evening of March 
3d apparently in usual health and fell into a sleep from which he never awoke, 

Knf lvin l 1 * O' O /I 1 1 /~\ O 11 VI /I W /V 1 /—V 1 V /—V /\ 71 i ^ k 1. _ "1 _ "1 J * 1 i 1 • 


but merged into an unconscious condition in which he lingered until the morning 


of March 8th, when it is said as “a ray of sunlight flashed full and strong into the 
room and fell upon the face of the sufferer, who was surrounded by Ins family, 


calmly and without a struggle the regular breathing ceased and the great preacher 
was gone.” The eloquent tongue was silent forever. 

The remains of Beecher were viewed by thousands, and many came who could 
not see the bier for the crowds that thronged the house and streets. It is doubtful 
if an\ pi lvate citizen s funeial was ever so largely attended. One of his admirers 
m wilting of the occasion said. He loved the multitude, and the multitude came 





HENRY WARD BEECHER. 


455 


to Ins funeral; lie loved the flowers, and ten thousand buds breathed their fragrance 
and clad his resting-place in beauty ; he loved music, and the voice of the organ 
lose, and the anthems which had delighted him again rolled their harmonies to the 

rafteis; he loved the sunshine, and it streamed through the windows and was a halo 
around him.” 

Within the beauty of this halo we would leave the memory of this great man, 
hung as a portrait in a frame or gold from which his benign and cheerful face shall 
continue to look down upon succeeding generations. And as we read his encour¬ 
aging “Lectures to Young Men ;” his broad and profound sermons from “Plymouth 
Pulpitliis inspiring “Patriotic Addresses;” his editorials in the “Christian 
Union ;”. his “ Yale Lectures on Preaching his “ Star Papers his “ Evolution 
an( l Religion;” his novel “Norwood,” or his “Life of Jesus Christ: Earlier 
Scenes,” on which he was engaged when he died (which are his chief contributions 
to literature), we will often look up at the picture and exclaim, “Oh! that those 
lips might speak again ! ” 


PUBLIC DISHONESTY. 


CORRUPT public sentiment produces dis¬ 
honesty. A public sentiment in which 
dishonesty is not disgraceful; in which 
bad men are respectable, are trusted, are honored? 
are exalted, is a curse to the young. The fever of 
speculation, the universal derangement of business, 
the growing laxness of morals is, to an alarming ex¬ 
tent, introducing such a state of things. 

If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to 
atrocious dishonesties is not aroused; if good men do 
not bestir themselves to drag the young from this 
foul sorcery if the relaxed bands of honesty are not 
tightened, and conscience tutored to a severer morality, 
our nis-ht is at hand—our midnight not far off. Woe 
to that guilty people who sit down upon broken laws, 
and wealth saved by injustice! Woe to a generation 
fed by the bread of fraud, whose children’s inheri¬ 
tance shall be a perpetual memento of their father’s 
unrighteousness; to whom dishonesty shall be made 
pleasant by association with the revered memories of 
father, brother and friend ! 

But when a whole people, united by a common dis¬ 
regard of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors, 
and States vie with States in an infamous repudiation 
of just debts, by open or sinister methods ; and nations 
exert their sovereignty to protect and dignify the 
knavery of the commonwealth, then the confusion of 
domestic affairs has bred a fiend before whose flight 
honor fades away, and under whose feet the sanctity 



of truth and the religion of solemn compacts are 
stamped down and ground into the dirt. Need we 
ask the cause of growing dishonesty among the 
young, the increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, 
when States are seen clothed with the panoply of 
dishonesty, and nations put on fraud for their gar¬ 
ments ? 

Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defal¬ 
cations, occurring in such melancholy abundance, 
have at length ceased to be wonders, and rank with 
the common accidents of fire and flood. The budget 

O 

of each week is incomplete without its mob and run¬ 
away cashier—its duel and defaulter, and as waves 
which roll to the shore are lost in those which follow 
on, so the villainies of each week obliterate the record 
of the last. 

Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is 
flagrant, whose private habits would disgrace the 
ditch, are powerful and popular. I have seen a man 
stained with every sin, except those which required 
courage; into whose head I do not think a pure 
thought has entered for forty years; in whose heart 
an honorable feeling would droop for very loneliness; 
in evil, he was ripe and rotten; hoary and depraved 
in deed, in word, in his present life and in all his 
past; evil when by himself, and viler among men ; 
corrupting to the young; to domestic fidelity, recreant; 
to common honor, a traitor; to honesty, an outlaw; 
to religion, a hypocrite—base in all that is worthy of 









456 


HENRY WARD BEECHER. 


man and accomplished in whatever is disgraceful, 
and yet this wretch could go where he would—enter 
good men’s dwellings and purloin their votes. Men 
would curse him, yet obey him; hate him, and assist 
him; warn their sons against him, and lead them to 
the polls for him. A public sentiment which 
produces ignominous knaves cannot breed honest 
men. 

We have not yet emerged from a period in which 
debts were insecure; the debtor legally protected 
against the rights of the creditor; taxes laid, not by 
the reouirements of justice, but for political effect, 


and lowered to a dishonest inefficiency, and when thus 
diminished, not collected ; the citizens resisting their 
own officers; officers resigning at the bidding of the 
electors; the laws of property paralyzed; bankrupt 
laws built up, and stay-laws unconstitutionally enacted, 
upon which the courts look with aversion, yet fear to 
deny them lest the wildness of popular opinion should 
roll back disdainfully upon the bench to despoil its 
dignity and prostrate its power. General suffering 
has made us tolerant of general dishonesty, and the 
gloom of our commercial disaster threatens to become 
the pall of our morals. 


-•O*- 


EULOGY ON GENERAL GRANT. 


Part I. 



NOTHER name is added to the roll of those 
whom the world will not willingly let die. 
A few years since, storm-clouds filled his 
heaven, and obloquy, slander and bitter lies rained 
down upon him. The clouds are all blown away; 
under a serene sky General Grant laid down his life 
and the whole nation wept. The path to his tomb 
is worn by the feet of innumerable pilgrims. 

The mildewed lips of slander are silent, and even 
criticism hesitates lest some incautious word should 
mar the history of the modest, gentle, magnanimous 
warrior. The whole nation watched his passage 
through humiliating misfortunes with unfeigned sym¬ 
pathy—the whole world sighed when his life ended. 
At his burial the unsworded hands of those whom he 
had fought lifted his bier and bore him to his tomb 
with love and reverence. 


vp *A» vL» vp 

The South had laid the foundation of her industry, 
her commerce, and her very commonwealth upon 
slavery. 

It was slavery that inspired her councils, that en¬ 
gorged her philanthropy, that corrupted her political 
economy and theology, that disturbed all the ways of 
active politics—broke up sympathy between North 
and South. The hand that fired upon Sumter ex¬ 
ploded the mine under the Flood Rock of slavery 
and opened the way to civilization. The spark that 
was there kindled fell upon the North like fire upon 
autumnal prairies. Men came together in the presence 


of this universal calamity with sudden fusion; the 
whole land became a military school. But the 
Northern armies once organized, an amiable folly of 
conciliation began to show itself. Some peaceable 
way out of the war was hoped for. Generals seemed 
to fight so that no one should be hurt. The South 
had smelted into a glowing mass; it believed in its 
course with an infatuation that would have been 
glorious if the cause had been better; it put its 
whole sold into it and struck hard. For two years 
the war lingered, unmarked by great deeds. Lincoln, 
sad and sorrowful, felt the moderation of his generals 
and longed for a man of iron mould, who had but two 
words in his military vocabulary—victory or annihila¬ 
tion. He was coming; he was heard from at Henry 
and Donelson. Three great names were rising to 
sight,—Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, and, larger than 
any, Grant. 

At the opening of the war his name was almost 
unknown. It was with difficulty he could obtain 
a command. Once set forward, Donelson, Shiloh, 
Vicksburg, Chattanooga, the Wilderness, Spottsyl- 
vania, Petersburg, Appomattox—these were his foot¬ 
steps ! In four years he had risen, without political 
favor, from the bottom to the very highest command 
—not second to any living commander in all the 
world. His plans were large, his undiscouraged will 
was patient to obduracy. He was not fighting for 
reputation, nor for the display of generalship, nor for 
a future Presidency. He had but one motive, and 












HENRY WARD BEECHER. 


457 


that as intense as life itself—the subjugation of the 
rebellion and the restoration of the broken Union. 
He embodied the feelings of the common people ; he 
was their perfect representative. 

******** 

Part II. 

The tidings of his death, long expected, gave a 
shock to the whole world. Governments, rulers, 
eminent statesmen, and scholars from all civilized 
nations gave sincere tokens of sympathy- For the 
hour sympathy rolled as a wave over all our own 


land. It closed the last furrow of war, it extinguished 
the last prejudice, it effaced the last vestige of hatred, 
and cursed shall be the hand that shall bring them 
back. 

Johnson and Buckner on one side, Sherman and 
Sheridan upon the other, of his bier, he went to the 
tomb, a silent symbol that liberty had conquered 
slavery ; patriotism, rebellion ; and peace, war. He 
rests in peace. No drum or cannon shall disturb his 
rest. Sleep, hero, until another trumpet shall shake 
the heavens and the earth—then come forth to glory 
and immortality! 


O 


FROM “THE SPARKS OF NATURE.” 


ATRIOTISM, in our day, is made to be an 
argument for all public wrong and all 
private meanness. For the sake of coun¬ 
try a man is told to yield everything that makes 
the land honorable.. For the sake of country a man 
must submit to every ignominy that will lead to the 
ruin of the State through disgrace of the citizen. 
There never was a man so unpatriotic as Christ was. 
Old Jerusalem ought to have been everything to Him. 
The laws and institutions of His country ought to 
have been more to Him than all the men in His coun¬ 
try. They were not, and the Jews hated Him ; but the 
common people, like the ocean waters, moved in 
tides towards His heavenly attraction wherever He 
went. 

When men begin their prayers with, “ 0 thou 
omnipotent, omnipresent, all-seeing, ever-living, 
blessed Potentate, Lord God Jehovah ! ” I should 
think they would take breath. Think of a man in 
his family, hurried for his breakfast, praying in such 
a strain. He has a note coming due, and it is going 
to be paid to-day, and he feels buoyant; and he goes 
down on his knees like a cricket on the hearth, and 
piles up these majestically moving phrases about God. 
Then he goes on to say that he is a sinner; he is 
proud to say that he is a sinner. Then he asks for 
his daily bread. He has it; and he can always ask 
for it when he has it. Then he jumps up, and goes 



over to the city. He comes back at night, and goes 
through a similar wordy form of “ evening prayers ; ” 
and he is called “ a praying man ! ” A prayiny man ? 
I might as well call myself an ornithologist, because 
I eat chicken once in awhile for my dinner. 

When I see how much has been written of those 
who have lived; how the Greeks preserved every 
saying of Plato’s; how Boswell followed Johnson, 
gathering up every leaf that fell from that rugged 
old oak, and pasting it away,—I almost regret that 
one of the disciples had not been a recording angel, 
to preserve the odor and richness of every word of 
Christ. When John says, “ And there are also many 
other things which Jesus did, the which, if they 
should be written every one, I suppose that even the 
world itself could not contain the books that would 
be written,” it affects me more profoundly than when 
I think of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, 
or the perishing of Grecian art in Athens or Byzan¬ 
tium. The creations of Phidias were cold stone, 
overlaid by warm thought; but Christ described His 
own creations when He said, “ The words that I speak 
unto you, they are life.” The leaving out of these 
things from the New Testament, though divinely 
wise, seems, to my yearning, not so much the unac¬ 
complishment of noble things as the destruction of 
great treasures, which had already had oral life, but 
failed of incarnation in literature. 















JOHN B. GOUGH. 

one who ever heard this great natural orator of the Temperance 
cause can forget the impression he made. It was not simply “a 
voice crying,” it was a whole man speaking, out of his very life, and 
every part of him contributed something to the effect. His face, his 
hands, his body, all joined together with his voice to give expression 
to his thoughts. Without education, with no elocutionary training, 
he was, nevertheless, an orator of the first rank, for he knew how to play on all the 
keys of human nature, and he moved all classes of listeners. He was born in 
England in 1817. Having lost his father at the age of twelve, he came to America 
to make his way. He was at first successful, but later troubles heaped up on him, 
and he drifted into a life of hopeless dissipation. He made a wretched living by 
going from one drinking house to another, singing songs and giving comic imper¬ 
sonations. He tried to get on the stage, for which he had a passion, but his disso¬ 
lute life made such a career impossible. In 1839 he married, and tried to work, 
but his old habits were too strong for him, and a few years later he lost his wife and 
child and sank into a woeful condition. He used to describe how, in the delirium 
which came upon him at this period, the tools with which he tried to work became 
serpents and crawled in his hands. In 1842, when at the lowest point of dissipation, 
he received some kindness from a Quaker, who induced him to sign the pledge. 
Once he broke it through the influence of old companions, but he immediately 
recovered control and made a public confession. 

Possessed henceforth with a great desire to devote himself to the cause of Tem¬ 
perance, he started out at once as a lecturer and tramped from place to place, holding 
meetings and stirring his listeners with his eloquence, which was of an unusual 
sort. 

During the first year of his travels he spoke 386 times on the one subject which 
lay at his heart. He possessed a remarkable power of imitation, and he could move 
the audience to bursts of laughter, or go down to the depths of pathos and draw 
tears from the hardest hearts. His power on the platform steadily increased and he 
soon had a national reputation. 

Ten years after his change of life, he was invited to visit England in the interests 
of Temperance Keform, and his first lecture in Exeter Hall produced a sensation. 
The call for lectures came from all the cities, and he spent two years in that country. 

No event of his life showed his power more clearly than did his address at 
Oxford, where his voice was at first drowned by the hisses and cat-calls of the 
students. He; however, held his own and conquered his audience and came through 

45 S 
































JOHN B. GOUGH. 


459 


triumphantly, so that at a subsequent visit at Oxford he was received with dis¬ 
tinction. He addressed over 5,000 audiences during the first seventeen years of his 
lecture travels, and he always succeeded in carrying deep conviction. He was not 
a constructive reformer, but he used all his powers to reform individuals by reach¬ 
ing their consciences and wills. In this work he was eminently successful. Later 
in his life he also lectured on other subjects, and became one of the most popular 
attractions for lyceums. He always chose subjects which would give full scope for 
his powers of eloquence, and he was almost certain to touch upon his great life- 
theme. His most frequent lectures were on “Eloquence and Orators” and “Pecu¬ 
liar People,” and he never failed to give a fund of anecdotes, told with rare skill 
and imitation. 

He lived for years at West Boylston, Massachusetts, and as he prospered through 
his lecture-work he gathered books about him and lived a joyous, happy life, 
writing and talking with his many friends. 

His published works (some of which have been translated into French, Dutch, 
Scandinavian and Tamil) are “Autobiography ” (1846); “Orations” (1854); “Tem¬ 
perance Addresses” (1870); “Temperance Lectures” (1879), and “Sunlight and 
Shadow; or, Gleanings from My Life-Work” (1880). 

While lecturing at Frankford, Pennsylvania, February 18, 1886, he was stricken 
down with cerebral apoplexy and lapsed into unconsciousness, soon followed by 
death. Pie had just uttered the words “Young man, keep your record clean.” 


-•O#- 


WATER AND RUM. 


The following apostrophe on Water and execration on Rum, by Mr. John B. Gough, was never published 
in full till after his death. He furnished it to a young friend many years ago, who promised not to publish 
it while he was on the lecture platform. 


ATER ! There is no poison in that cup ; no 
fiendish spirit dwells beneath those crystal 
drops to lure you and me and all of us to 
ruin ; no spectral shadows play upon its waveless sur¬ 
face ; no widows’ groans or orphans’ tears rise to God 
from those placid fountains ; misery, crime, wretched¬ 
ness, woe, want, and rags come not within the hal¬ 
lowed precincts where cold water reigns supreme. 
Pure now as when it left its native heaven, giving 
vigor to our youth, strength to our manhood, and 
solace to our old age. Cold water is beautiful and 
bright and pure everywhere. In the moonlight foun¬ 
tains and the sunny rills; in the warbling brook and 
the giant river ; in the deep tangled wildwood and the 
cataract’s spray ; in the hand of beauty or on the 
lips of manhood—cold water is beautiful every¬ 
where. 

Rum ! There is a poison in that cup. There is a 
serpent in that cup whose sting is madness and whose 



embrace is death. There dwells beneath that smiling 
surface a fiendish spirit which for centuries has been 
wandering over the earth, carrying on a war of deso¬ 
lation and destruction against mankind, blighting and 
mildewing the noblest affections of the heart, and 
corrupting with its foul breath the tide of human life 
and changing the glad, green earth into a lazar house. 
Gaze on it! But shudder as you gaze ! Those spark¬ 
ling drops are murder in disguise; so quiet now, yet 
widows’ groans and orphans’ tears and maniacs’ yells 
are in that cup. The worm that dieth not and the 
fire that is not quenched are in that cup. 

Peace and hope and love and truth dwell not within 
that fiery circle where dwells that desolating monster 
which men call rum. Corrupt now as when it left its 
native hell, giving fire to the eye, madness to the brain, 
and ruin to the soul. Rum is vi!e and deadly and 
accursed everywhere. The poet would liken it in its 
fiery glow to the flames that flicker around the abode 









460 


JOHN B. GOUGH. 


of the damned. The theologian would point you to 
the drunkard’s doom, while the historian would unfold 
the dark record of the past and point you to the fate 
of empires and kingdoms lured to ruin by the siren 
song of the tempter, and sleeping now in cold obscur¬ 
ity, the wrecks of what once were great, grand and 
glorious. Yes, rum is corrupt and vile and deadly, 
and accursed everywhere. Fit type and semblance 
of all earthly corruption ! 

Part II. 

Base art thou yet, oh, Bum, as when the wise man 
warned us of thy power and bade us flee thy enchant¬ 
ment. Vile art thou yet as when thou first went 
forth on thy unholy mission—filling earth with deso¬ 
lation and madness, woe and anguish. Deadly art 
thou yet as when thy envenomed tooth first took fast 
hold on human hearts, and thy serpent tongue first 
drank up the warm life-blood of immortal souls. Ac¬ 
cursed art thou yet as when the bones of thy first 
victim rotted in a damp grave, and its shriek echoed 
along the gloomy caverns of hell. Yes, thou infernal 
spirit of rum, through all past time hast thou been, as 
through all coming time thou shalt be, accursed every¬ 
where. 


In the fiery fountains of the still ; in the seething 
bubbles of the caldron ; in the kingly palace and the 
drunkard’s hovel; in the rich man’s cellar and the 
poor man’s closet; in the pestilential vapors of foul 
dens and in the blaze of gilded saloons; in the hand 
of beauty and on the lip of manhood, rum is vile and 
deadly and accursed everywhere. 

Bum, we yield not to thy unhallowed influence, 
and together we have met to plan thy destruction. 
And by what new name shall we call thee, and to 
what shall we liken thee when we speak of thy attri¬ 
butes? Others may call thee child of perdition, the 
base-born progeny of sin and Satan, the murderer of 
mankind and the destroyer of immortal souls ; but I 
will give thee a new name among men and crown thee 
with a new horror, and that new name shall be the 
sacramental cup of the Bum-Power, and I will say to 
all the sons and daughters of earth—Dash it down ! 
And thou, Bum, shalt be my text in my pilgrimage 
among men, and not alone shalt my tongue utter it, 
but the groans of orphans in their agony and the cries 
of widows in their desolation shall proclaim it the 
enemy of home, the traducer of childhood, and the 
destroyer of manhood, and whose only antidote is the 
sacramental cup of temperance, cold water! 


THE POWEB OF HABIT. 


(descriptive, spirited and dramatic.) 


BEMEMBEB once riding from Buffalo to 
the Niagara Falls. I said to a gentleman, 
“ What river is that, sir ? ” 

“ That,” said he, “ is Niagara river.” 

“ Well, it is a beautiful stream,” said I; “ bright, 
and fair and glassy. “ How far off are the rapids?” 

“ Only a mile or two,” was the reply. 

“ Is it possible that only a mile from us we shall 
find the water in the turbulence which it must show 
near the Falls ? ” 

“ You will find it so, sir.” And so I found it; 
and the first sight of Niagara I shall never forget. 

Now, launch your bark on that Niagara river ; it 
is bright, smooth, beautiful, and glassy. There is a 
ripple at the bow ; the silver wake you leave behind 
adds to your enjoyment. Down the stream you glide, 
oars, sails, and helm in proper trim, and you set out 
on your pleasure excursion. 



Suddenly some one cries out from the bank, 
“ Young men, ahoy ! ” 

“What is it?” 

“ The rapids are below you ! ” 

“ Ha ! ha ! we have heard of the rapids; but we 
are not such fools as to get there. If we go too fast, 
then we shall up with the helm, and steer to the 
shore; we will set the mast in the socket, hoist the 
sail, and speed to the land. Then on, boys, don’t be 
alarmed, there is no danger.” 

“ Young men, ahoy there ! ” 

“ What is it ? ” 

“ The rapids are below you ! ” 

“ Ha ! ha ! we will laugh and quaff; all things 
delight us. What care we for the future ! No man 
ever saw it. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. 
We will enjoy life while we may, we will catch pleas¬ 
ure as it flies. This is enjoyment; time enough to 















JOHN B. GOUGH. 


461 


steer out of danger when we are sailing swiftly with 
the current.” 

“ Young men, ahoy ! ” 

“ What is it?” 

“ Beware ! beware ! The rapids are below you ! ” 
“ Now you see the water foaming all around. See 
how fast you pass that point! Up with the helm ! 
Now turn ! Pull hard ! Quick ! quick ! quick ! 
pull for your lives! pull till the blood starts from 


your nostrils, and the veins stand like whip-cords 
upon your brow ! Set the mast in the socket! hoist 
the sail! Ah ! ah ! it is too late ! Shrieking, howl¬ 
ing, blaspheming, over they go.” 

Thousands go over the rapids of intemperance every 
year, through the power of habit , crying all the 
while, “ When I find out that it is injuring me, I 
will give it up l ” 


WHAT IS A 

HAT is a minority ? The chosen heroes of 
this earth have been in a minority. There 
is not a social, political, or religious privi¬ 
lege that you enjoy to-day that was not bought for 
you by the blood and tears and patient suffering of 
the minority. It is the minority that have vindicated 
humanity in every struggle. It is a minority that 
have stood in the van of every moral conflict, and 
achieved all that is noble in the history of the world. 
You will find that each generation has been always 
busy in gathering up the scattered ashes of the 
martyred heroes of the past, to deposit them in the 
golden urn of a nation’s history. Look at Scotland, 
where they are erecting monuments—to whom ?— 
to the Covenanters. Ah, they were in a minority. 
Bead their history, if you can, without the blood 
tingling to the tips of your fingers. These were in 
the minority, that, through blood, and tears, and boot¬ 
ings and scourgings—dying the waters with their 
blood, and staining the heather with their gore— 


MINORITY ? 

fought the glorious battle of religious freedom. Minor¬ 
ity ! if a man stand up for the right, though the 
right be on the scaffold, while the wrong sits in the 
seat of government; if he stand for the right, though 
he eat, with the right and truth, a wretched crust; 
if he walk with obloquy and scorn in the by-lanes 
and streets, while the falsehood and wrong ruffle it in 
silken attire, let him remember that wherever the 
right and truth are there are always 

“ Troops of beautiful, tall angels ” 

gathered round him, and God Himself stands within 
the dim future, and keeps watch over His own ! If 
a man stands for the right and the truth, though 
every man’s finger be pointed at him, though every 
woman’s lip be curled at him in scorn, he stands in a 
majority ; for God and good angels are with him, and 
greater are they that are for him, than all they that 
be against him. 















CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW. 

America's most famous after-dinner orator. 

T is impossible in a sketch like this to do justice to the remarkable 
versatility of Mr. Depew. His admirable addresses would fill several 
bulky volumes. As an after-dinner speaker, he is without a peer, 
and his wit, logic and eloquence never fail him. What could be 
more apt than his words, when, upon entering a public hall where a 
number of leading men were straining themselves to prove the 
Christian religion a delusion and a sham, and there were instant and clamorous 
calls for him, he said: “Gentlemen, my mother’s Bible is good enough for me; 
have you anything better to offer?” And then with touching pathos and impas¬ 
sioned words he made an appeal for the religion which they reviled, which must 
have pierced the shell of more than one agnostic heart. 

Chauncey Mitchell Depew was born at Peekskill, New York, April 23, 1834. 
His remote ancestors were French Huguenots, who founded New Bochelle, in West¬ 
chester County. His father, Isaac Depew, was a prominent and highly esteemed 
citizen of Peekskill, and his mother, Martha Mitchell, was a representative of the 
distinguished New England family, one of whose members, Boger Sherman, was a 
signer of the Declaration of Independence. 

Chauncey spent his boyhood in Peekskill, where he prepared for college. He 
was a bright student, and at the age of eighteen entered Yale College, from which 
he was graduated in 1856, with one of the first honors of his class. In June, 1887, 
Yale conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. It will be noted that Mr. Depew 
reached his majority at about the time of the formation of the Bepublican Party. 
Although of Democratic antecedents, he had been a close student of politics and 
his sympathies were with the aims of the new political organization, to which he 
speedily gave his allegiance. 

Mr. Depew studied law in his native village, and was admitted to the bar in 1858. 
In the same year, he was elected as a delegate to the Bepublican State Convention, 
this being an acknowledgment of the interest he had taken in the party, and the 
skill and energy he had shown in advocating its policy. He began the practice of 
law in 1859, and was highly successful from the first. In his early manhood, his 
striking power as a stump speaker, his readiness at repartee, and his never-failing 
good humor, made him a giant in politics, to which he was literally forced to give 
attention. But with all these extraordinary gifts, he could launch the thunderbolts 
of invective against wrong and stir the profoundest depths of emotion by his appeals. 













































CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW. 


463 


He loved liberty and hated oppression, and has always believed that the United 
States of America is the happiest and greatest country upon which the sun ever 
shone. His patriotic speeches are models of eloquence and power. 

In 1860 he took the stump for Abraham Lincoln and added greatly to his repu¬ 
tation as a ready, forceful, and brilliant pleader for that which he believed to be 
right. It cannot be denied that he contributed much to the success of that memorable 
election. 

In 1861 Mr. Depew was nominated for the Assembly in the Third Westchester 
County District, and, although the constituency was largely Democratic, he was 
elected by a handsome majority. He fully met all the High expectations formed, 
and was re-elected in 1862. By his geniality, wit, integrity and courtesy he became 
as popular among his political opponents as among his friends. He was made his 
party’s candidate for Secretary of State, directly after the Democrats had won a 
notable triumph by the election of Horatio Seymour as Governor; but by his dash 
and brilliancy and his prodigious endurance (he spoke twice a day for six weeks), 
he secured a majority of 30,000. So admirably did he perform the duties of the 
office that he was offered a renomination, but declined. 

During the administration of President Johnson, Secretary of State Seward 
appointed Mr. Depew Minister to Japan, but after consideration, the offer was 
declined. He seemed to have decided to withdraw from politics and to devote his 
time and energies to his profession. That shrewd railway man and financier, Com¬ 
modore Vanderbilt, had watched the career of Depew, and had formed a strong 
admiration for him, while the eldest son, William H. Vanderbilt, became his firm 
friend. In 1866 Mr. Depew was appointed the attorney for the New York and 
Harlem Bailroad Company, and three years later, when that road was consolidated 
with the New York Central, he was made the attorney of the new organization, 
beins: afterward elected a member of the Board of Directors. 

As other and extensive roads were added to the system, Mr. Depew, in 1875, 
was promoted to be general counsel for them all, and elected to a directorship in 
each of the numerous organizations. The year previous the Legislature had made 
him Begent of the State University, and one of the Commissioners to build the 
Capitol at Albany. 

In 1884 the United States senatorship was tendered to Mr. Depew, but he was 
committed to so many business and professional trusts that he felt compelled to 
decline the honor. Two years before, William H. Vanderbilt had retired from the 
presidency of the New York Central, and in the reorganization Mr. Depew was 
made Second Vice-President. The President, Mr. Butter, died in 1885, and Mr. 
Depew was elected to the presidency, which office he still holds. 

At the National Bepublican Convention of 1888, New York voted solidly for 
Mr. Depew as its candidate for the Presidency, but he withdrew his name. At the 
convention at Minneapolis in 1892 he was selected to present the name of President 
Harrison, and made one of the best speeches of his life. When Mr. Blaine resigned 
as Secretary of State, President Harrison urged Mr. Depew to accept the place, but 
after a week’s deliberation he felt obliged to decline the honor. He has, however, 
continued to take an active interest in politics. 

During the last ten years Mr. Depew lias been frequently abroad, and some of 


464 


CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW. 


his happiest speeches have been delivered on board steamers and in foreign banquet¬ 
ing halls, where he never forgets to speak in words of patriotic praise of America. 

-»o.- 


THE PILGRIMS. 


HEY were practical statesmen, these Pil¬ 
grims. They wasted no time theorizing, 
upon methods, but went straight at the | 
mark. They solved the Indian problem with shot¬ 
guns, and it was not General Sherman, but Miles 
Standish, who originated the axiom that the only 
good Indians are the dead ones. They were bound 
by neither customs nor traditions, nor committals to 
this or that policy. The only question with them 
was, Does it work? The success of their Indian 
experiment led them to try similar methods with 
witches, Quakers, and Baptists. Their failure taught 
them the difference between mind and matter. A 
dead savage was another wolf under ground, but one 
of themselves persecuted or killed for conscience sake 
sowed the seed of discontent and disbelief. The 
effort to wall in a creed and wall out liberty was at 
once abandoned, and to-day New England has more 
religions and not less religion, but less bigotry, than 
any other community in the world. 

In an age when dynamite was unknown, the Pil¬ 
grim invented in the cabin of the “ Mayflower” the 
most powerful of explosives. The declaration of the 
equality of all men before the law has rocked thrones 
and consolidated classes. It separated the colonies 
from Great Britain and created the Uuited States. 
It pulverized the chains of the slaves and gave man¬ 
hood suffrage. It devolved upon the individual the 


functions of government and made the people the 
I sole source of power. It substituted the cap of 
' liberty for the royal crown in France, and by a blood¬ 
less revolution has added to the constellation of 
American republics, the star of Brazil. But with the 
ever-varying conditions incident to free government, 
the Puritan’s talent as a political mathematician will 
never rust. Problems of the utmost importance press 
upon him for solution. When, in the effort to regu¬ 
late the liquor traffic, he has advanced beyond the 
temper of the times and the sentiment of the people 
in the attempt to enact or enforce prohibition, and 
either been disastrously defeated or the flagrant 
evasions of the statutes have brought the law into 
contempt, he does not despair, but tries to find the 
error in his calculation. 

If gubernatorial objections block the way of high 
license, he will bombard the executive judgment and 
conscience by a proposition to tax. The destruction 
of homes, the ruin of the young, the increase of 
pauperism and crime, the added burdens upon the 
taxpayers by the evils of intemperance, appeal with 
resistless force to his training and traditions. As the 
power of the saloon increases the difficulties of the 
task, he becomes more and more certain that some 
time or other and in some way or other he will do 
that sum too. 














HENRY WOODFIN GRADY. 


THE BRILLIANT SOUTHERN ORATOR AND JOURNALIST. 


T is only a few times in a century that some unselfish soul, coupled 
with a towering genius of mind, rises in grandeur and goodness so far 
above his fellows as to command their almost worshipful admiration 
and love. Such a man was Henry W. Grady. No written memorial 
can indicate the strong hold he had upon the Southern people, nor 
portray that peerless personality which gave him his marvelous 
power among all men with whom he came into contact. 

Grady was, perhaps, above all other prominent political leaders of his times, 
devoid of sectional animosities, and did more, by voice and pen, than any other 
man, during the decade of his prominence, to bridge the bloody chasm between the 
North and South, which designing politicians on both sides were endeavoring to 
keep open. Notwithstanding the fact that his father was a Southern slaveholder, 
and lost his life in fighting for the cause of secession, young Grady recognized the 
providence of God in the failure of that cause, and rejoiced in the liberation of the 
black man, though with his fallen shackles lay the wrecked fortune of himself, his 
widowed mother and his beloved Southland. The Union was the pride of Grady’s 
life. Daniel Webster was not more loyal to its Constitution or bolder in defending 
its principles. In writing or speaking on any subject to which he was moved by an 
inspiring sense of patriotism or conviction of duty, he was always eloquent, logical, 
aggressive and unanswerable. It was with logic, earnest honesty of conviction and 
a tongue of tender pathos and burning eloquence, together with a personal magnet¬ 
ism that always accompanies a great orator, that he literally mastered his audiences, 
regardless of their character, chaining them to the train of his thought, and carry¬ 
ing them captive to his convictions. Such a man could not be held within the 
narrow limits of any section. Wherever he went the power of his individuality 
quickly made him known, and his splendid genius needed only an opportunity to 
make him famous. 

Like Patrick Henry, his great fame as an orator rested principally upon three 
speeches. One was made before the New England Society, at a banquet held in 
New York, in 1889, in which his theme was “The New South” and its message to 
the North. Another was at the State Fair at Dallas, Texas; but the most magnifi¬ 
cent and eloquent effort of his life was delivered in Boston, December 13, 1889, 
just ten days before he died. The theme of this address was “The Race Problem,” 






























466 


HENRY WOODFIN GRADY. 


and it is accorded by all who heard it, or have read it, as the most soul-stirring 
speech, and, withal, the fairest and most practical discussion of this vexed subject 
which has yet been presented by any man. 

Henry Woodfin Grady was born in Atlanta, Georgia, May 17, 1851, and died 
there December 23, 1889. His father was a merchant in that city before the war, 
and Henry was the oldest of a family of three children. His mother, whose maiden 
name was Gartrell, was a woman of strong mind, quick intelligence, deep religious 
convictions, sweetness of disposition, and force of character happily blended. Grady 
was a boy of promise, and his youth was a fair index of his after-life. He was 
always brilliant, industrious, patriotic, enterprising, conscientious, and devoted to 
his parents to a marked degree. The tragic death of his father, when the boy 
was fourteen, profoundly affected him, but it, perhaps, hastened his own precocious 
growth by leaving him as the mainstay of his mother in providing for the family. 

At the age of seventeen Henry Grady was graduated at the University of Georgia 
(1868); but he subsequently attended the University of Virginia, where he took his 
degree before he was twenty years old, and in less than a year was married to the 
sweetheart of his youth. His majority found him occupying the position of editor 
and part owner of the Rome (Georgia) “ Commercial.” This failed, and cost the 
young editor nearly all his savings. Soon after this he removed to Atlanta, and 
connected himself with the Atlanta “Herald,” the columns of which he made the 
brightest in the South; but misfortune overtook its financial management and con¬ 
sumed all the remainder of Grady’s fortune. Thus, at twenty-three years of age, 
he had failed twice and was almost despairing when the old adage, “A friend in- 
need is a friend indeed,” was now verified to him. Cyrus W. Field loaned the 
penniless young man twenty thousand dollars to buy a controlling interest in the 
Atlanta “Constitution.” He made it the greatest paper in the South. 

Besides the editorial work on his own paper, Mr. Grady contributed much to 
others, among them the New York “Ledger,” to which he contributed a series 
of articles on “The New South,” the last of which was published only a few days 
before his death. When his brilliant and beneficent career was cut short at the 
early age of thirty-eight, the whole country had become interested in his work, 
and joined in common mourning over his loss. A fund of over twenty thousand 
dollars, contributed from all parts of the country, was quickly collected to build a 
monument to his memory. It was erected in Atlanta, Georgia, and unveiled with 
imposing ceremonies on October 21, 1891. 

One who knew Henry W. Grady well thus writes of him : “He had a match¬ 
less grace of soul that made him an unfailing winner of hearts. His translucent 
mind pulsated with the light of truth arid beautified all thought. He grew flowers 
in the garden of his heart and sweetened the world with the perfume of his spirit. 
His endowments are so superior, and his purposes so unselfish that he seemed to 
combine all the best elements of genius and live under the influence of an almost 
divine inspiration. When building an aircastle over the framework of his fancy, 
or when pouring out his soul in some romantic dream, or when sounding the depths 
of human feeling by an appeal for sweet charity’s sake,.his command of language 
was as boundless as the realm of thought, his ideas as beautiful as pictures in the 
sky, and his pathos as deep as the well of tears.” 


H. W. GRADY. 


467 


THE NEW SOUTH * 



HERE was a South of secession and slavery 
—that South is dead. There is a South 
of Union and freedom—that South 


is 


living, breathing, growing every hour. 

I accept the term, “ The New South,” as in no 
sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me is the 
home of my childhood and the traditions of my peo¬ 
ple. There is a New South, not through protest 
against the Old, but because of new conditions, new 
adjustments, and, if you please, new ideas and aspira¬ 
tions. It is to this that I address myself. You have 
just heard an eloquent description of the triumphant 
armies of the North, and the grand review at Wash¬ 
ington. I ask you, gentlemen, to picture, if you can, 
the foot-sore soldier, who, buttoning up in his faded 
gray jacket the parole which was taken, testimony to 
his children of his fidelity and faith, turned his face 
southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think 
of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, en¬ 
feebled by want and wounds. Having fought to ex¬ 
haustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of 
his comrades, and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid 
face for the last time to the graves that dot the old 
Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and 
begins the slow and painful journey. What does he 
find ?—let me ask you, who went to your homes eager 
to find all the welcome you had justly earned, full 
payment for your four years’ sacrifice—what does he 
find, when he reaches the home he left four years 
before? He finds his house in ruins, his farm de¬ 
vastated, his slaves freed, his stock killed, his barns 
empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his 


social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away, 
his people without law or legal status, his comrades 
slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoul¬ 
ders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone, 
without money, credit, employment, material, or train¬ 
ing—and, besides all this, confronted with the gravest 
problem that ever met human intelligence—the es¬ 
tablishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated 
slaves. 

What does he do—this hero in gray with a heart 
of gold—does he sit down in sullenness and.despair? 
Not for a day. Surely, God, who had scourged him 
in his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity ! As 
ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was 
restoration swifter. 

The soldiers stepped from the trenches into the 
furrow; the horses that had charged upon General 
Sherman’s line marched before the plow, and fields 
that ran red with human blood in April were green 
with the harvest in June. From the ashes left us in 
1864, we have raised a brave and beautiful city-, 
and, somehow or other, we have caught the sunshine 
in the bricks and mortar of our homes and have budded 
therein not one single ignoble prejudice or memory. 

It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however 
humble, in this work. Never was nobler duty con¬ 
fided to human hands than the uplifting and up¬ 
building of the prostrate South—misguided, perhaps, 
but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave, and 
generous always. On the records of her social, in¬ 
dustrial, and political restoration we await with confi¬ 
dence the verdict of the world. 


-*<>•- 


REGARD FOR THE NEGRO RACE. 

From speech on the Race Problem, at annual banquet of the Boston Merchants’ Association, Dec., 1889. 

[HE resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men j slavery. The slave-ships sailed from your ports—the 
of the South—the men whose genius made slaves once worked in your fields, and you sold them 

to the South. Neither of us now defends the traffic, 
nor the institution. 

The love the whites of the South feel for the 
negro race you cannot measure nor comprehend. As 
I attest it here, the spirit of my old black mammy 
from her home up there looks down to bless, and 



glorious every page of the first seventy 
years of American history—whose courage and forti¬ 
tude you tested in four years of the fiercest war— 
realize, as you cannot, what this race problem means 
—what they owe to this kindly and dependent race. 
Nor are they wholly to blame for the presence of 


* Copyright, H. C. Hudgins, publisher of “Life of Grady.’ 















468 


H. W. GRADY. 


through the tumult of this night steals the sweet 
music of her croonings as thirty years ago she held 
me in her black arms and led me smiling into sleep. 
This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision 
of an old Southern home, with its lofty pillars, and 
its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden 
air. I see women with strained and anxious faces, 
and children alert yet helpless. I see night come 
dow r n with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a 
big homely room I feel on my tired head the touch 
of loving hands—now worn and wrinkled, but fairer 
to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and 
stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal 
man—as they lay a mother’s blessing there wdiile at 
her knees—the truest altar I yet have found—I 
thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary, because 
her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin or guard at her 
chamber door, puts a black man’s loyalty between 
her and danger. 

I catch another vision. The crisis of battle—a 
soldier struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave, 
scuffling through the smoke, winding his black arms 
about the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling death 



—bending his trusty face to catch the words that 
tremble on the stricken lips, so wrestling meantime 
with agony that he would lay down his life in his 
master’s stead. I see him by the w r eary bedside, 
ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying 
with all his humble heart that God will lift his 
master up, until death comes in mercy and in honor 
to still the soldier’s agony and seal the soldier’s life. 
I see him by the open grave, mute, motionless, un¬ 
covered, suffering for the death of him who in life 
fought against his freedom. I see him when the 
mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is 
closed, turn away and with downcast eyes and uncer¬ 
tain step start out into new and strange fields, falter¬ 
ing, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling 
figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter 
day. And from the grave comes a voice saying, 
“ Follow him! Put your arms about him in his 
need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend as 
he was mine.” And out into this new world—strange 
to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both—I follow ! 
And may God forget my people—when they forget 
these. 




APPEAL FOR TEMPERANCE* 

(In no cause in which his sympathies were enlisted was Mr. Grady more active and earnest than in that 
of temperance. The following extract is from one of his speeches delivered during the exciting local cam¬ 
paign in Georgia in 1887.) 



Y friends, hesitate before you vote liquor 
back into Atlanta, now that it is shut out. 
Don’t trust it. It is powerful, aggressive 
and universal in its attacks. To-night it enters an 
humble home to strike the roses from a woman’s 
cheek, and to-morrow it challenges this Republic 
in the halls of Congress. To-day it strikes a crust 
from the lips of a starving child, and to-morrow 
levies tribute from the government itself. There is 
no cottage in this city humble enough to escape it— 
no palace strong enough to shut it out. It defies the 
law when it cannot coerce suffrage. It is flexible to 
cajole, but merciless in victory. It is the mortal 
enemy of peace and order. The despoiler of men, 
the terror of women, the cloud that shadows the 
face of children, the demon that has dug more graves 
and sent more souls unshrived to judgment, than all 
the pestilences that have Vasted life since God sent 
the plagues to Egypt, and all the wars since Joshua 


stood beyond Jericho. 0 my countrymen! loving 
God and humanity, do not bring this grand old city 
again under the dominion of that power. It can 
profit no man by its return. It can uplift no industry, 
revive no interest, remedy no w r rong. You know 
that it cannot. It comes to turn, and it shall profit 
mainly by the ruin of your sons and mine. It comes 
to mislead human souls and crush human hearts 
under its rumbling wheels. It comes to bring gray¬ 
haired mothers down in shame and sorrow to their 
graves. It comes to turn the wife’s love into despair 
and her pride into shame. It comes to still the 
laughter on the lips of little children. It comes to 
stifle all the music of the home and fill it with silence 
and desolation. It comes to ruin your body and 
mind, to wreck your home, and it knows that it must 
measure its prosperity by the swiftness and certainty 
with which it wreaks this work. 


* Copyright, C. H. Hudgins & Co. 
















STANTON 


ANNA D 


KINSON 


FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS 


























JULIA WARD HOWE. 



AUTHOR OF THE “BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.’’ 

N Beacon Street, Boston, in an old-fasliionecl home, lives a woman 
mingling the twilight of her eventful life with the evening of the 
closing century, who has been a potent factor in its progress and 
developments. In her unpretentious little home have sat and talked 
the greatest men of America, and many of the European celebrities 
who have visited this country. Even the casual visitor to the home 
of this aged woman feels in the atmosphere of the place, with its mementoes of 
great men and women, some indefinable flavor, like a lingering perfume which tells 
him there has been high thinking and noble speech within the walls which sur¬ 
round him. 

This noted poet, author, and philanthropist was born in New York City on May 
27, 1819. Her father was Samuel Ward, and she numbers among her ancestors 
the famous General Marion, of South Carolina; Governor Samuel Ward, of Rhode 
Island; and Roger Williams, the apostle of religious tolerance. F. Marion Craw¬ 
ford, the novelist, is the son of her sister, who married Mr. Crawford, the artist. 
Mrs. Howe’s mother died when she was only five years of age, and her father five 
years later. But he had been a prosperous banker and provided to give her every 
advantage of a liberal education, which provision was carried out—her instructions 
including music, German, Greek, and French. She began to write verses while 
very young. 

In 1843 Miss Ward was married to Doctor Samuel G. Howe. They went abroad 
on their wedding tour, spending a year in the Old World. Again, in 1850, she 
went to Europe, passing the winter in Rome with her two youngest children. The 
next year she returned to Boston, and in 1852 and 1853 published her first volume 
of poems, entitled “Passion Flowers,” which attracted much attention. At the 
same time her “Words for the Hour, a Drama in Blank Verse,” was produced in a 
leading theatre in New York and also in Boston. Her interest in the anti-slavery 
question began in 1851. In 1857 she visited Havana, and published her observa¬ 
tions in a book, entitled “A Trip to Cuba,” which so vigorously attacked the 
degrading institutions of the Spanish rule that its sale has since been prohibited on 
that island. In 1861 appeared her famous “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with 
the chorus “John Brown’s Body, etc.,” which was published in her third volume, 
entitled “Later Lyrics.” The song and chorus at once became known throughout 
the country and 'was sung everywhere. In 1867 Mrs. Howe and her husband 

469 






















470 


JULIA WARD HOWE. 


visited Greece, and won the gratitude of that nation by aiding them in the effort 
they were making for national independence. Her book “From Oak to Olive” was 
written after her visit to Athens. In 1868 Mrs. Howe joined the Woman Suffrage 
Movement, and the next year, before the Legislature in Boston, made her first speech 
urging its principles; and from that time forward has been officially connected with 
the movement. 

Mrs. Howe visited England in 1872, where she lectured in favor of arbitration 
as the means of settling national and international disputes. At the same time she 
held, in London, a series of Sunday-evening services, devoted to Christian missionary 
work. During the same year she attended, as a delegate, the Congress for Prison 
Reform, held in London. On her return to the United States she organized or 
instituted the Woman’s Peace Festival, which still meets every year on the twenty- 
second of June. 

Since her husband’s death, in 1876, Mrs. Howe has preached, lectured and 
traveled much in all parts of the United States, the most popular of her lectures 
being “Is Polite Society, Polite?” “Greece Revisited,” and “Reminiscences of 
Longfellow and Emerson.” In 1878 Mrs. Howe made another journey abroad, 
and spent over two years in travel in England, France, Italy, and Palestine. She 
was one of the presiding officers of the WOman’s Rights Congress, which met at 
Paris, and she lectured in that city and in Athens on the work of the various 
women’s associations in America. She has served as President in the Association of 
Advancement for AVomen for several years, and, notwithstanding hqr advanced age, 
retains her connection with this organization, and is an earnest promoter of their 
interest. She has formed a number of social Women’s Clubs, having for their 
object, mental improvement, in which the members study Latin, French, German, 
literature, botany, political economy and many other branches. She has been a 
profound student of philosophy, and has written numerous essays on philosophical 
themes. 

Mrs. Howe’s three living daughters, all of whom are married, have been followers 
of her theories concerning woman’s freedom. One of them, Mrs. Laura Richards, 
is a well-known writer of stories for children, some of them being classics of their 
kind. “ Captain January ” is her best-known book. Mrs. Maud Howe Elliot, the third 
daughter, is a successful lecturer and also a novelist. Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, 
another daughter of Mrs. Howe, is a writer of acknowledged ability on social 
topics. 


-•o* 


BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. 


INE eye hath seen the glory of the coming 
of the Lord ; 

He is trampling out the vintage where the 
grapes of wrath are stored : 

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible 
swift sword; 

His truth is marching on. 



I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred 
circling camps; 

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews 
and damps ; 

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and 
flaring lamps, 

His day is marching on. 









JULIA WARD HOWE. 


471 


I have read a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished 
steel; 

“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my 
grace shall deal; ” 

Let the Hero born of woman, crush the serpent with 
his heel, 

Since God is marching on. 

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never 
call retreat; 

lie is sifting out the hearts of men before His judg¬ 
ment seat; 


Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him ! be jubilant, 
my feet! 

Our God is marching on. 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across 
the sea, 

\\ ith a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and 
me ; 

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make 
men free, 

While God is marching on. 


o 


OUR COUNTRY. 



primal rocks she wrote her name, 

Her towers were reared on holy graves, 
The golden seed that bore her came 
Swift-winged with prayer o’er ocean 
waves. 


First in the glories of thy front 

Let the crown-jewel Truth be found : 
Thy right hand fling with generous wont 
Love’s happy chain to furthest bound. 


The Forest bowed his solemn crest, 
And open flung his sylvan doors ; 
Meek Rivers led the appointed Guest 
To clasp the wide-embracing shores; 


Let Justice with the faultless scales 
Hold fast the worship of thy sons, 
Thy commerce spread her shining sails 
Where no dark tide of rapine runs. 


Till, fold by fold, the’ broidered Land 
To swell her virgin vestments grew, 
While Sages, strong in heart and hand 
Her virtue’s fiery girdle drew. 


So link thy ways to those of God, 

So follow firm the heavenly laws, 

That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed 
And storm-sped angels hail thy cause. 


0 Exile of the wrath of Kings! 

0 Pilgrim Ark of Liberty! 

The refuge of divinest things, 
Their record must abide in thee. 


0 Land, the measure of our prayers, 

Hope of the world, in grief and wrong ! 
Be thine the blessing of the years, 

The gift of faith, the crown of song. 




THE UNSPEAKABLE PANG. 


(FROM “ A TRIP TO CUBA, I860.”) 


HO are these that sit by the long dinner- 
table in the forward cabin, with a most 
unusual lack of interest in the bill of fare? 
Their eyes are closed, mostly, their cheeks are pale, 
their lips are quite bloodless, and to every offer of 
good cheer, their “ No, thank you,” is as faintly ut¬ 
tered as are marriage-vows by maiden lips. Can they 
be the same that, an hour ago, were so composed, so 
jovial, so full of dangerous defiance to the old man of 
the sea ? The officer who carves the roast beef offers 
at the same time a slice of fat; this is too much ; a 



panic runs through the ranks, and the rout is instan¬ 
taneous and complete. . . 

To what but to Dante’s Inferno can we liken this 
steamboat-cabin, with its double row of pits, and its 
dismal captives ? What are those sighs, groans, and 
despairing noises, but the a lft guai rehearsed by the 
poet ? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from 
our perpetual torpor with offers of food and praises of 
shadowy banquets,—“Nice mutton-chop, sir? roast- 
turkey? plate of soup ? ” Cries, of “ No, no ! ” re¬ 
sound, and the wretched turn again and groan. The 





















472 


JULIA WARD HOWE. 




philanthropist has lost the movement of the age,— 
keeled up in an upper birth, convulsively embracing a 
blanket—what conservative more immovable than he ? 
The great man of the party refrains from his large 
theories, which, like the circles made by the stone 
thrown into the water, begin somewhere and end 
nowhere. As we have said, he expounds himself no 
more, the significant forefinger is down, the eye no 
longer imprisons yours. But if you ask him how he 
does, he shakes himself as if like Farinata— 

“ averse 1’ inferno in gran dispetto,” 

“he had a very contemptible opinion of hell.” 

Let me not forget to add, that it rains every day, 
that it blows every night, and that it rolls through the 


twenty-four hours till the whole world seems as if 
turned bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to 

chaos, and fearing to launch away.But all 

things have an end, and most things have two. After 
the third day, a new development manifests itself. 
Various shapeless masses are carried up-stairs and suf¬ 
fered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie 
there in shivering heaps. From these larvse gradually 
emerge features and voices,—the luncheon-bell at last 
stirs them with the thrill of returning life. They 
look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles 
of recognition,—the steward comes, no fiend this 
time, but a ministering angel ; and lo ! the strong 
man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors for 
pickled oysters. 









MRS. MARY ASHTON RICE LIVERMORE, 

FAMOUS SCHOLAR, TEACHER, ARMY NURSE, EDITRESS, LECTURER, ABOLITIONIST AND 

woman’s SUFFRAGIST. 


seems almost incredible,” says a writer, “that a woman now so famous 
made mud pies in her childhood, was often sent supperless to bed, 
and was frequently bounced down into a kitchen chair with an 
emphasis that caused her to see stars.” When a young girl, strug¬ 
gling to support herself, she took in shop-work, made shirts, and sub¬ 
sequently learned the trade of a dressmaker, at which she worked 
for twenty-five cents a day. At eighteen she ran away from home like a boy, and 
spent three eventful years on a Southern plantation—years full of comedy and 
tragedy, and packed with thrilling experiences. Here were nearly five hundred 
slaves, with whom, and with their white masters, she was brought face to face daily. 
Here she witnessed scenes as tragic as any described in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Her 
description of the whipping of negro Matt, the cooper; his agonizing but unavail¬ 
ing plea for mercy; her subsequent visit alone to his cabin, when she entreated him 
to “run away, Matt, I’ll help you,” and his lonely death, will bring tears to the 
eyes of every reader. 

Mrs. Livermore was the daughter of Timothy Rice, and was born in Boston, 
December 19, 1821. Notwithstanding the above reference to her early experi¬ 
ences, Mrs. Livermore had and improved all the advantages of the time for a 
thorough education. She graduated from the public schools of Boston at the age 
of fourteen, receiving a medal for good scholarship, and afterwards completed a 
four years’ course in the seminary at Charleston, Mass., in two years, and was 
elected a member of the faculty as a teacher of Latin and French. While per¬ 
forming these duties she continued the study of Greek and metaphysics under 
private tutors, and at the age of eighteen, as above suggested, she left home and 
went South to take charge of a family school on a plantation in Southern Virginia, 
remaining there nearly thee years. Her experiences in the South made her 
a most radical abolitionist, and on her return North she actively seconded 
every movement for the freedom of the slaves. She opened a select school for 
young ladies from fourteen to twenty years, at Duxbury, Mass., but relinquished it 
in 1845 on her marriage to Dr. D. P. Livermore, a Universalist minister, in Falls 
River, Mass. She made a most excellent minister’s wife, organizing literary clubs 
among the membership, and wrote many hymns and songs for church and Sunday- 
school books. She was also an active temperance worker, organizing a cold-water 

473 































474 


MRS. MARY ASHTON RICE LIVERMORE. 


army of 1500 boys and girls, whom she delighted with temperance stories which 
she wrote and read to them. These stories were published in 1844 under the title 
of the “Children’s Army.” In 1857 she removed with her husband to Chicago, 
where Mr. Livermore became the editor of the Universalist organ for the North¬ 
west, with his wife as assistant editor. During her husband’s absence in his church 
work she had charge of the entire establishment, paper, printing office and publish¬ 
ing house included, and wrote for every department of the paper except the theolo¬ 
gical, at the same time furnishing stories and sketches to Eastern publications, and 
was also active and untiring in Sunday-school, church and charitable work. At the 
convention in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was nominated, she was the only 
woman reporter who had a place among the hundred or more of men. During the 
Civil War she made her name famous by resigning all positions, save that on her 
husband’s paper, even securing a governess for her children, and devoting herself 
entirely to the work of relief and assistance to the soldiers through the United 
States Sanitary Commission. She organized Soldiers’ Aid Societies, delivered 
public addresses, wrote circulars, bulletins and reports, and made trips to the front 
with sanitary stores, giving personal attention to the distribution of the same, and 
bringing back numbers of invalid soldiers, accompanying many of them in person 
to their homes. She organized and conducted Sanitary Fairs, detailed nurses for 
the hospitals and accompanied them to their posts, and at the close of the war pub¬ 
lished her reminiscences, entitled “My Story of the War,” which is regarded as the 
most complete record of the hospital and sanitary work in the Northern army dur¬ 
ing this great fratricidal struggle. 

Returning home after the war Mrs. Livermore became an ardent supporter of the 
Woman’s Suffrage movement as the best means not only of improving the condition 
of women, but with the broad, philanthropic idea of giving them a greater oppor¬ 
tunity for doing good. Before the war she had opposed the placing of the ballot 
in the hands of women, but her experiences in the army taught her differently. 
She arranged for the first Woman’s Suffrage Convention in Chicago, elicited the 
aid of the leading clergymen of the city, and secured the attendance of the most 
prominent advocates of the cause from various parts of the country. The associa¬ 
tion was duly organized with Mrs. Livermore as its first president. “The Agitator,” 
a Woman’s Suffragist paper, was started by her in 1869 at her own expense and 
risk, in which she espoused the temperance cause, as well as woman’s suffrage. In 
1870 she became the editor of the “Woman’s Journal” of Boston, and the family 
removed to Melrose, Massachusetts. Mrs. Livermore, however, retained the 
editorship but two years, resigning it, in 1872, that she might give her more 
undivided time to the lecture field. 

During the last quarter century she has been heard in the lyceum courses 
of this country, visiting almost every State in the Union, and also lecturing at many 
points in Europe. The volume “What Shall We Do with Our Daughters 
and Other Lectures,” published in 1883, and a subsequent of the same 
character comprise her most important published discourses. The charm of 
Mrs. Livermore’s manner and the eloquence of her delivery have been 
equalled by few modern speakers. “At her feet,” writes one of her eulogists, 
“millions of people have sat and listened in admiration and wonder. The rich 


MRS. MARY ASHTON RICE LIVERMORE. 


475 


and poor, the high and low, the learned and unlearned, have been alike thrilled 
and moved by her burning words. She has swayed brilliant audiences of fashion; 
has spoken in State prisons, jails and penitentiaries; to audiences composed of out¬ 
casts; and to audiences numbering thousands of children. With untold wealth 
of mental resources, and a brain teeming with soul-stirring thoughts, these lectures 
overflow with grand principles; while the extraordinary scenes, thrilling stories, 
and remarkable facts given in them illustrate those principles with great clearness 
and force. Throughout her public speeches, whatever the theme, the listener never 
tires, but is rather uplifted by the ‘golden thoughts’ and ‘living truths’ that enrich 
them from beginning to end.” 

During this period her pen was not idle. Her articles have appeared in 
the “North American Review,” the “Arena,” the “ Chautauquan,” “Inde¬ 
pendent,” “Youth’s Companion,” “Christian Advocate,” “Woman’s Journal” and 
other high-class periodicals. She is identified with the Woman’s Christian 
Temperance Union, for ten years being president of the Massachusetts branch of 
that organization. She is also president of the American Woman’s Suffrage Asso¬ 
ciation, of the Beneficent Society of the New England Conservatory of Music, 
and was the first president for two years of the Woman’s Congress. Mrs. Liver¬ 
more, notwithstanding her advanced age, keeps steadily at work with voice, pen and 
influence. After she was seventy-five years of age, at the earnest request of many 
prominent friends and admirers throughout the United States, she wrote her auto¬ 
biography, a large volume of over 700 pages, issued in 1897. 

We cannot better close this article than by quoting, from Mrs. Livermore herself, 
a retrospective paragraph with a prospective closing which is beautiful to witness in 
one standing, as she now does, in the twilight of a long and eventful career: “I 
cannot say that I would gladly accept the permission to run my earthly race once 
more from beginning to end. I am afraid it would prove wearisome—‘a twice-told 
tale.’ And so while rejoicing in the gains of the past and in the bright outlook 
into the future, I prefer to go forward into the larger life that beckons me further 
on, where I am sure it will be better than here. And when the summons comes, 
although the world has dealt kindly with me, I shall not be sorry to lift the latch 
and step out into ‘that other chamber of the King, larger than this and lovelier.’” 


USEFUL WOMEN* 


(from “what shall we do with our daughters,” 1883. lectures on “ Superfluous Women .”) 


OS A BONHEIJR has achieved world-wide 
fame and pecuniary independence as one 
of the most skilful painters of animals ; the 
boldness and independence of her own character in¬ 
spiring her pencil, and her faithfulness to nature 
civin" great force to her work. The whole civilized 
world does homage to her genius; and, during the 
sie<r e of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, the 

C 1 


Crown Prince of Prussia gave orders that her studio 
and residence at Fontainebleau should be spared and 
respected. 

Florence Nightingale, well born, highly educated, 
and brilliantly accomplished, gave herself to the study 
of hospitals, and of institutions for the diseased, help¬ 
less, and infirm. Appreciating the work of the Sisters 
of Charity in the Catholic Church, she felt the need 



* Copyright, Lee & Shepard, Boston, Mass. 










MRS. MARY ASHTON RICE LIVERMORE. 


476 

of an institution which should be its counterpart in the 
Protestant Communion. She visited civil and military 
hospitals all over Europe, studied with the Sisters of 
Charity in Paris their system of nursing and hospital 
management, and went into training as a nurse in the 
House of the Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth 
on the Rhine. For ten years she served an appren¬ 
ticeship, preparing for the great work of her life. 
Her opportunity came during the war in the Crimea, 
when through incompetence, and utter disregard of 
sanitary laws, the rate of mortality in the English 
hospitals surpassed that of the fiercest battles. Horror 
and indignation were felt throughout England. Miss 
Nightingale offered her services to the government 
with a corps of trained nurses, was accepted, and went 
to Constantinople. 

The disorder, the want—while storehouses were 
bursting with the needed hospital supplies—the in¬ 
competence, the uncleanliness, the suffering and death 
created general dismay. Unappalled by the shocking 
chaos, Miss Nightingale ordered the storehouses at 
Scutari to be broken open, when want gave place to 
abundance; and soon her executive skill and rare 
knowledge transformed the hospitals into models of 
order and comfort. She spared herself no labor, 
sometimes standing twenty hours in succession giving 
directions, and refusing to leave her post, even when 
she broke down with hospital-fever. Sadly over¬ 
worked, her patience and cheerfulness were unfailing, 


winning the love of the roughest soldiers ; and, as she 
walked the wards, men too weak to speak plucked her 
gown with feeble fingers, or kissed her shadow as it 
fell athwart their pillow. She expended her own 
vitality in this work, and returned to England an in¬ 
valid for life. But not an idle invalid, for from her 
sick-room there have gone plans for the improvement 
of hospitals and the training of nurses wrought out by 
her busy brain and pen. 

Caroline Herschel, sister of the great astronomer, 
was his constant helper and faithful assistant, in this 
character receiving a salary from the king. In addi¬ 
tion she found time to make her own independent 
observations, discovering comets, remarkable nebulae, 
and clusters of stars, and receiving from the Royal 
Society a gold medal in recognition of her work. 

Charlotte Bronte’s portion in life was pain and toil 
and sorrow. Her experience was a long struggle with 
every unkindness of fate, and she lacked every advan¬ 
tage supposed necessary to literary work. Her force 
of character and undismayed persistence triumphed 
over all hindrances. She put heart and conscience 
into books that held the literary world in fascination. 
In them she rent the shams of society by her keen 
analyses. She depicted life as she had known it, 
shorn of every illusion, and then beautified it by un¬ 
flinching loyalty to duty, and unwavering fidelity to 
conscience. The publication of “ Jane Eyre ” marked 
an era in the literary world not soon to be forgotten. 







* * * * 


BELYA ANN LOCKWOOD. 

FIRST WOMAN LAWYER BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. 

El heroic perseverance, strength of intellect, dignity and power of 
mind, logic and eloquence,—and withal true womanliness of character, 
the sisterhood of the world perhaps could present no counterpart in 
any single woman, of any age, to Belva A. Lockwood. Had she 
devoted her life to literature the profoundness of her writings must 
have impressed the world. The fragments of her speeches which 
remain are worthy to live. She lias had one idea in life—to enfranchise woman— 
and while earning her living in a profession, for recognition in which she had to 
fight and conquer the United States, she has, from every advanced step, held back 
the helping hand to her more timid sisters. If her ideal is ever realized, she will 
live in future history as one of the emancipators and greatest benefactors of her sex. 

Belva Ann Bennett was born in Niagara County, New York, October 24, 1830, 
on her father’s farm. Her early education was received at a district school and in 
the academy of her native town. At fourteen years of age she began to teach in 
summer, attending school in winter. At eighteen she married a young farmer, 
Uriah H. McNall, who died in 1853, leaving one daughter. The young widow 
entered Genesee College in Lima, New York, the same year, from which she 
graduated with the degree of A. B. four years later. She was immediately elected 
to a position in the Lockport Academy, where she manifested her progressive 
principles by introducing declamation and gymnastics for young ladies, conducting 
the classes herself. This was in addition to her duties as professor of higher 
mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and botany. Four years later she became proprietor 
of McNall Seminary in Oswego, New York, which she conducted until, the close 
of the Civil War, at which time she removed to Washington, H. C., and in March, 
1868, married Bev. Ezekiel Lockwood, a Baptist minister and chaplain during the 
war. Hr. Lockwood died in 1877. At this late date Mrs. Lockwood resumed her 
studies, entering the Syracuse University at New York, from which she graduated 
with the degree of A. M. She had previous to this studied law in Washington, 
graduating from the National University Law School with the degree of H. C. L. in 
May, 1873. In the same year she was admitted to practice in the highest court of 
the District, and in 1875 applied for admission to the Court of Claims, which was 
refused ; first, on the ground that she was a woman, and afterwards that she was a 
married woman. In 1876 she applied for admission to the Supreme Court of the 
United States. This was denied her because there was no English precedent. It 

477 



























478 


BELVA ANN LOCKWOOD. 


was in vain tliat she pleaded that Queens Eleanor and Elizabeth had both been 
supreme chancellors of the realm, that Countess Ann had sat with the judges on 
the bench at the Assizes of Appleby. Finally she drafted a bill and secured its 
introduction into both houses of Congress, which was passed in 1879, admitting 
women to the Court, by which means she accomplished her purpose, and since that 
time she has enjoyed an active and lucrative practice, being privileged to appear 
before any Court in the United States. Nine other women have since been admitted 
to practice in the Supreme Court under the above Act. 

Among the services which Mrs. Lockwood has rendered her sex mav be 
mentioned the bill passed by Congress in 1870, giving to the women employees of 
the government, of whom there are many thousands, the same pay as men receive 
for similar work. She also secured the passage of a bill appropriating $50,000 for 
the aid of sailors and mariners. She has frequently appeared before congres¬ 
sional committees in the cause of women, her arguments always looking to the final 
enfranchisement of woman. An extract from one of these addresses succeeds this 
article. Mrs. Lockwood is also an intense advocate of temperance and labor reform. 

When President Garfield died in 1881, he was considering her application for 
appointment as minister to Brazil. In 1884 and again in 1888, she was nominated 
for President of the United States by the Equal Bights Party of San Francisco, 
California, and though knowing that her candidacy would only subject her to the 
ridicule of the masses, it afforded an opportunity for the preaching of her theory of 
woman suffrage, and she accepted the nomination, and made a canvass that awakened 
the people of the United States to no small consideration of the subject. The popu¬ 
larity given her by these several movements has called her largely to the lecture 
platform and into newspaper correspondence during the last fifteen years. She was 
a delegate to the International Congress of Peace in Paris, and made one of the 
opening speeches, and presented a paper in the French language on “ International 
Arbitration,” which was well received. In 1890 she was again a delegate to the 
same convention in London, and her paper thereon “Disarmament” was widely 
commented upon. Even at this late date her thirst for knowledge again evinced 
itself, for she remained in London to take a course of University Extension lectures 
at Oxford. In 1891 she was again a delegate to the Peace Congress at Borne, where 
her influence was equally as conspicuous as before. 

Of late years Mrs. Lockwood, in addition to her law practice, has acted as 
assistant editor of the “ Peacemaker,” a Philadelphia magazine, all the time pursuing 
her studies and contributing no small modicum of encouragement, both by her pen 
and lectures, to the furtherance of the University Extension idea. It may be said, 
however, that her interest and labor in all forward movements are mainly due to 
her confidence in the aid they will contribute toward the final enfranchisement of 
woman. 


BELYA ANN LOCKWOOD. 


479 


4 

ADDRESS BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES WASH 

INGTON, IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE. 


ENTLEMEN of the Committee : We come 
before you to-day, not with any studied 
eloquence, far-fetched erudition, or new 
theories for the metamorphosis of our government, or 
the overthrow of our social economy and relations, 
but we come, asking for our whole commonwealth, 
tor the fathers who begat us, and the brothers at our 
side tor the mothers who bore us, and the sisters 
who go hand in hand with us ; for the orphan and 
the widow unprotected ; for the wretched inebriate 
and the outcast Magdalene; for the beggars who 
throng our streets and the inmates of our jails and 
asylums—for these we ask you that we too may have 
a hand and a voice, a share in this matter which so 
nearly concerns not only our temporal but even our 
eternal salvation. We ask you that we may have an 
interest that shall awaken from its apathy fully one- 
half of the moral and intellectual resources of the 
country, fully one-half of its productive interest—an 
interest which contains in the germ the physical power 
and vital force of the whole nation. Weakness can¬ 
not beget power, ignorance cannot beget wisdom, 
disease cannot produce health. Look at our women 
of to-day, with their enfeebled bodies, dwarfed intel¬ 
lects, laxness of moral force, without enough of 
healthy stimulus to incite to action, and compare 
them with our grandmothers of the Revolution and 
the Martha Washington school. Here you find a 
woman who dared to control her own affairs; who 
superintended a farm of six hundred acres ; giving 
personal instructions to the workmen, writing her own 
bills and receipts, and setting an example of industry 
and frugality to the neighboring women who called 
to see her. 

I need not, gentlemen, enumerate to you to prove 
what I wish to prove to-day, the countless numbers 
of women who have participated creditably in govern¬ 
ment from the days of our Saviour until the present 
time. You know that Victoria rules in England; 
and the adoration of the English heart to-day for its 
Queen, found expression but a few weeks since in one 
of our popular lecture halls, when the audience, com¬ 
posed partly of Englishmen, were asked to sing “God 
Save the Queen.” The wisdom of the reign of 
Elizabeth, “good Queen Bess,” as she has been 


called, gave to England her prestige—the proud 
pre-eminence which she holds to-day among the 
nations of the earth. Isabella I. of Spain, the patron 
saint of America, without whose generosity our 
country to-day might have been a wilderness, was 
ne\er nobler than when after Ferdinand’s refusal, 
after the refusal of the crowned authority of England, 
the disapproval of the wise men of her own kingdom, 
she rose in her queenly majesty, and said, “ I under¬ 
take it for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge 
my jewels to raise the necessary funds.” Maria 
Theresa, of Austria, who assumed the reins of 
government with her kingdom divided and disturbed, 
found herself equal to the emergency, brought order 
out of chaos, and prosperity to her kingdom. Chris¬ 
tine, of Sweden, brought that kingdom to the zenith 
of its power. Eugenie, Empress of the French, in 
the late disastrous revolution, assumed the regency 
of the Empire in defiance of her ministry, and, when 
forced to flee, covered her flight with a shrewdness 
that would have done credit to Napoleon himself. 
Florence Nightingale brought order and efficiency 
into the hospitals of the Crimea, and Clara Barton, 
with her clear head and generous heart, has lifted up 
the starving women of Strassburg, and made it possi¬ 
ble for them to be self-sustaining. I need not cite to 
you Catharine, of Russia, Cleopatra, or the Queen of 
Sheba, who came to admire the wisdom of Solomon ; 
or the Roman matrons, Zenobia, Lucretia, Tullia; 
or revert to the earliest forms of government when 
the family and the church were lawgivers; remind 
you of Lydia, the seller of purple and fine linen, who 
ruled her own household, called to the church ; of 
Aquilla and Priscilla, whom Paul took with him and 
left to control the church at Ephesus, after they had 
been banished from Rome by the decree of Claudius; 
or of Phebe, the deaconess. It is a well-known fact 
that women have been sent as ministers and ambas¬ 
sadors, the latter a power fuller than our country 
grants, to treat on important State matters between the 
crowned heads of Europe. In many cases they have 
represented the person of the monarch or emperor 
himself. France, since the beginning of the reign 
of Louis XIV., through the period of the ascendency 
of Napoleon I. down to the reign of Napoleon III., 










4 SO 


BELVA ANN LOCKWOOD. 



has employed women in diplomacy. Instances may 
be found recorded in a work entitled “ Napoleon and 
His Court,” by Madame Junot, and also in our own 
consular works. The late Empress of France has 
been said to be especially gifted in this respect. It 
has been the custom of Russia for the past century, 
and still continues to be, to send women on diplomatic 
errands. In this empire, also, where the voting is 
done by households, a woman is often sent to represent 
the family. 

Women are now writing a large proportion of the 
books and newspapers of the country, are editing 
newspapers and commanding ships. They are 
admitted to law schools, medical schools, and the 
higher order of colleges, and are knocking at Am¬ 
herst and Yale. Yea, more, they are admitted to 
the practice of law, as in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, 
Wyoming and Utah; admitted to the practice of 
medicine everywhere, and more recently to consulta¬ 
tion. One hundred women preachers are already 
ordained and are preaching throughout the land. 
Women are elected as engrossing and enrolling clerks 
in Legislatures, as in Wisconsin, Missouri and Indiana; 
appointed as justices of the peace, as in Maine, 
Wyoming and Connecticut; as bankers and brokers, 
as in New York and St. Louis. They are filling as 
school teachers three-fourths of the schools of the 
land. 

This is more than true of our own city. Shall we 
not then have women school trustees and superin¬ 
tendents ? Already they are appointed in the East 
and in the West, and women are permitted to vote at 
the school elections. Who has a deeper interest in 
the schools than the mothers. 


Look at the hundreds of women clerks in the 
government departments. They are all eligible, since 
the passage of the Arnell bill, to the highest clerk¬ 
ships. Look at the postmistresses throughout the 
land. Each one a bonded officer of the government, 
appointed by the President and confirmed by the 
Senate, the highest executive power in the land. “ The 
power of the President to appoint, and of the Senate 
to confirm, has never been questioned by our highest 
courts. Being bonded officers, they must necessarily 
qualify before a judicial officer.” 

And now, gentlemen of the Committee on Laws 
and J udiciary, whatever may be your report on these 
bills for justice and equality to women, committed to 
your trust, I hope you will bear in mind that you 
have mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, who will be 
affected by your decision. They may be amply 
provided for to-day, and be beggared to-morrow. 
Remember that “ life is short and time is fleeting,” 
but principles never die. You hold in your hands a 
power and an opportunity to-day to render yourselves 
immortal—an opportunity that comes but once in a 
lifetime. Shakespeare says, “ There is a tide in the 
affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to 
fortune.” Gentlemen, the flood-tide is with you ! 
Shall this appeal be in vain ? I hold in my hands 
the names of hundreds of men and women of our city 
pledged to this work, and they will not relax their 
efforts until it is accomplished. 

“ Truth crushed to earth will rise again; 

The eternal vears of God are hers; 

But Errror, wounded, writhes in pain 
And dies amid her worshippers.” 

















SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 

FOUNDER OF THE FIRST WOMEN’S TEMPERANCE ORGANIZATION. 

MONO the famous names of our time, history will, no doubt, record 
that of Susan B. Anthony with the greatest of reformers and 
progressive thinkers. Once held in derision, she now enjoys the re¬ 
ward of being esteemed and loved by her fellow men, while she is 
looked up to, by those of her own sex who believe in woman suffrage 
as one of the pioneers whose herculean efforts will eventually place 
the ballot in the hands of the women of the United States. 

Miss Anthony was born in South Adams, Mass., February 15, 1820. She was 
brought up in New York under the most religious influence of a Baptist mother 
and a Quaker father. From her childhood her character has been strongly marked 
by individuality and native strength. 

Mr. Anthony was a manufacturer and a wealthy man. He fitted his daughters 
and sons for teachers, and at the age of fifteen Susan began to teach in a Quaker 
family, her salary being one dollar per week and board. In 1837, a financial crash 
caused the failure of her father, who was, after this, aided in his efforts to retrieve 
his fortune by his children. Susan was particularly successful and progressive in 
her work, and identified herself actively with the New York Teachers’ Association, 
rendering herself conspicuous by pleading in the conventions for higher wages and 
equal rights for women in all the honors and responsibilities of the association. The 
women teachers throughout America owe her a debt of gratitude for their improved 
position and compensation to-day. 

The subject of temperance also claimed Miss Anthony’s attention from the time of 
her childhood. In 1852, she organized the New York State Women’s Temperance As¬ 
sociation, which was the first open temperance organization of women, and the founda¬ 
tion for the modern society known as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. 
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was president, and Miss Anthony for several years secre¬ 
tary, of this first organization. It was in this work that Miss Anthony discovered 
the impotency of women to advance the cause of temperance without the ballot, and 
she at once became an ardent woman suffragist. Sbe was also a pronounced and 
active abolitionist; and, during the war, Avith her friend and co-worker, Mrs. Stan¬ 
ton, and others, she presented a petition to Congress for the abolition of slavery, 
bearing nearly 400,000 signatures from all parts of the country. These petitions 
were so powerful in arousing the people, and also Congress, that Charles Sumner 
urged Miss Anthony to continue in the work. “Send on the petitions,” he Avrote, 
“they furnish the only background for my demands.” 

The most dramatic event of Miss Anthony’s life Avas her arrest and trial for vot- 




























482 


SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 


ing at the presidential election of 1872. When asked by the judge, “ You voted as 
a woman, did you not?” she replied, “No, sir, I voted as a citizen of the United 
States.” Before the date set for the trial Miss Anthony thoroughly canvassed her 
county and instructed the people in citizen’s rights, intending in this way to have 
the jurors, whoever they might be, well instructed in advance. To her chagrin 
change of venue was ordered to another county, setting the date three weeks ahead. 
Miss Anthony was equal to the emergency; in twenty-four hours dates were set and 
appointments made for a series of meetings in that county, and the country was 
thoroughly aroused in Miss Anthony’s behalf. The jury would no doubt have 
acquitted her, but the judge took the case out of their hands saying it was a ques¬ 
tion of law and not of fact, and pronounced Miss Anthony guilty and fined her 
$100.00 and costs. “I shall never pay a penny of this unjust claim,” she said. 
“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” She intended to take the case to the 
Supreme Court, and further to help her cause did not desire to give bond, preferring 
to be imprisoned, but her counsel gave bond and thus frustrated her purpose of 
carrying it to the Supreme Court. The inspectors who received the ballot from 
her and her friends were fined and imprisoned, but were pardoned by President 
Grant. Miss Anthony steadfastly adhered to her vow and never paid the fine. 

Miss Anthony lias always been in great demand on the platform and has lectured 
in almost every city and hamlet in the North. She has made constitutional argu¬ 
ments before congressional committees and spoken impromptu in all sorts of places. 
Wherever a good word in introducing a speaker, or a short speech to awaken a con¬ 
vention, or a closing appeal to set people to work Avas needed she always knew Iioav 
to say the right thing, and never wearied her audience. There Avas no hurry, no 
superfluity in her discourse, and it was equally devoid of sentiment or poetry. She 
was remarkably self-forgetful and devoted to the noblest principles. A fine sense 
of humor, lioweA^er, pervaded her logical arguments. She had the happy faculty 
of disarming and winning her opponents. She possessed a most wonderful memory, 
carrying in her mind the legislative history of each state, the formation and progress 
of political parties, and the public history of prominent men in our national life, 
and in fact Avhatever has been done the world over to ameliorate the condition of 
women. She is said to be a most congenial and instructive companion, and her un¬ 
failing sympathy makes her as good a listener as talker. 

It must be consolingly comforting and pleasant for this ardent worker, Avho 
has stemmed a violent tide of opposition throughout a long life, to have the 
tide of popular esteem turn so favorably toward her last years. Once it Avas the 
fashion of the press to ridicule and jeer, but at last the best reporters were sent to 
interview her and to put her sentiments before the world with the most respect¬ 
ful and laudatory personal comment. Society, too, threAv open its doors, and 
into many distinguished gatherings she carried a refreshing breath of sincerity and 
earnestness. Her seventieth birthday was celebrated by the National Woman Suf¬ 
frage Association with an outburst of gratitude which is perhaps unparalleled in the 
history of any living Avoman. In 1892 she was elected president of this association, 
at which time, though seventy-tAvo years of age, she Avas still of undiminished vigor 
and activity. Standing at the head of this organization, of which she Avas forty 
years before among the founders, Susan B. Anthony is one of the most heroic figures 
in American history. 




SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 


4 83 


WOMAN’S RIGHT TO SUFFRAGE. 


After its deliveiy, this address was printed and distributed in Monroe and Ontario counties prior to her 
trial, m June, 1873, the charge against her being that she had violated the law by voting in the presidential 
election in November, 1872. This address is necessarily argumentative ; but it contains°occasional passages 
which exhibit the power of her oratory. 

Copied from an account of the trial published in Rochester , New York , 1874. 


RIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I 
stand before you to-night, under indict¬ 
ment for the alleged crime of having voted 
at the last Presidential election, without having a 
lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this even¬ 
ing to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only 
committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised 
my citizen s right , guaranteed to me and all United 
States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond 
the power of any State to deny. * * * * 

The preamble of the federal constitution says: 

“ We, the people of the United States, in order to 
form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure 
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, 
promote the general welfare and secure the blessings 
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain 
and establish this constitution for the United States 
of America.” 

It was we, the people, not we, the white male citi¬ 
zens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the 
whole people, who formed the Union. And we 
formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to 
secure them ; not to the half of ourselves and the 
half of our posterity, but to the whole people— 
women as well as men. And it is a downright mock¬ 
ery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the bless¬ 
ings of liberty while they are denied the use of the 
only means of securing them provided by this demo¬ 
cratic-republican government—the ballot. 

The early journals of Congress show that when 
the committee reported to that body the original arti¬ 
cles of confederation, the very first article which be¬ 
came the subject of discussion was that respecting 
equality of suffrage. Article IV. said: 

“ The better to secure and perpetuate mutual 
friendship and intercourse between the people of the 
different States of the Union, the free inhabitants of 
each of the States, (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives 
from justice excepted,) shall be entitled to all the 
privileges and immunities of the free citizens of the 
several States.” 


Ihus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see 
the necessity of the universal application of the great 
principle of equal rights to all—in order to produce 
the desired result—a harmonious union and a homo¬ 
geneous people. * * * * 

B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three days r 
discussion in the United States Senate in 1866, on 
Senator Cowan’s motion to strike male from the Dis¬ 
trict of Columbia suffrage bill, said : 

“ Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the* 
American Senate, I stand for universal suffrage ; and 
as a matter of fundamental principle, do not recog¬ 
nize the right of society to limit it on any ground of 
race or sex.” * * * * 

Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against the 
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, insisted that, so 
soon as by the thirteenth amendment the slaves be¬ 
came free men, the original powers of the United 
States Constitution guaranteed to them equal rights 
—the right to vote and to be voted for. * * * 

Article 1 of the New York State Constitution says : 
“No member of this State shall be disfranchised 
or deprived of the rights or privileges secured to any 
citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land or the 
judgment of his peers.” 

And so carefully guarded is the citizen’s right to 
vote that the Constitution makes special mention of 
all who may be excluded. It says: 

“ Laws may be passed excluding from the right of 
suffrage all persons who have been or may be con¬ 
victed of bribery, larceny or any infamous crime.” * 
* * * * 

“ The law of the land ” is the United States Con¬ 
stitution, and there is no provision in that document 
that can be fairly construed into a permission to the 
States to deprive any class of their citizens of their 
right to vote. Hence, New York can get no power 
from that source to disfranchise one entire half of 
her members. Nor has “ the judgment of their 
peers” been pronounced against women exercising 
their right to vote ; no disfranchised person is allowed 








484 


SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 


to be judge or juror, and none but disfranchised per¬ 
sons can be women’s peers; nor has the Legislature 
passed laws excluding them on account of idiocy or 
lunacy ; nor yet the courts convicted them of bribery, 
larceny or any infamous crime. Clearly, then, there 
is no constitutional ground for the exclusion of women 
from the ballot-box in the State of New York. No 
barriers whatever stand to-day between women and 
the exercise of their right to vote save those of 
precedent and prejudice. * * * * 

For any State to make sex a qualification that 
must ever result in the disfranchisement of one en¬ 
tire half of the people is to pass a bill of attainder, 
or an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation 
of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings 
•of liberty are forever withheld from women and their 
female posterity. To them this government has no 
just powers derived from the consent of the gov¬ 
erned. To them this government is not a democracy. 
It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a 
hateful oligarchy of sex ; the most hateful aristocracy 
ever established on the face of the globe ; an oli¬ 
garchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. 
An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern 
the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the 
Saxon rules the African, might be endured ; but 


this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, 
husband, sons the oligarchs over the mother and 
sisters, the wife and daughters of every household; 
which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects; 
carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every 
home of the nation. 

* * * * 

Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define a citi¬ 
zen to be a person, in the United States, entitled to 
vote and hold office. 

Prior to the adoption of the thirteenth amend¬ 
ment, by which slavery was forever abolished, and 
black men transformed from property to persons, the 
judicial opinions of the country had always been in 
harmony with these definitions. To be a person was 
to be a citizen , and to be a citizen was to be a voter. 

The only question left to be settled now is : Are 
women persons ? And I hardly believe any of our 
opponents will have the hardihood to say they are 
not. Being persons, then, women are citizens, and 
no State has a right to make any new law, or to en¬ 
force any old law, that shall abridge their priviliges or 
immunities. Hence, every discrimination against 
women in the constitutions and laws of the several 
States is to-day null and void, precisely as is every 
one against negroes. 







ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 


FOUNDER OF THE WOMAN-SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT. 



MONG the few women who have shown themselves the polemic equals 
of the most trained and brilliant men of their times, the subject of 
this sketch stands prominently with the first. Mrs. Stanton was 
always a vigorous woman of commanding size with the mental force 
of a giant. In public debates and private arguments, she has shown 
herself to be an orator, forceful, logical, witty, sarcastic and eloquent. 
Like all great orators, she is imbued with one great idea which presses to the front 
in all she says or does and has been the moving force of her life. She believes that 
social and national safety lies alone in the purity of individuals and in the full and 
free bestowal upon every individual, regardless of sex, of all the rights and privi¬ 
leges of citizenship. In other words, whatever other excellencies or merits she may 
jrossess, she is primarily a Woman Suffragist. 

Elizabeth Cady was the daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and was born in Johns¬ 
town, N. Y., November 12, 1815. She was a child of marked intelligence and was 
thoroughly educated by her parents and graduated in Troy, N. Y., in 1832. She 
was learned in Latin and Greek, was a great lover of sports and, it is said that in 
early life she frequently complained that she had been born a girl instead of a boy. 
She used to discuss law in her father’s office and always insisted that no law was 
just which denied to women an equal right with men. She was anxious to complete 
her education in Union College where her brother had been educated, and her in¬ 
dignation was unbounded when she was refused entrance because girls were not ad¬ 
mitted to that institution. Thus it will be seen how she became a Woman’s Rights 
believer, and with her strong and cultured mind it was only natural that she should 
become one of its chief advocates. At the age of twenty-five, in 1840, she married 
Henry B. Stanton, an Anti-slavery orator, journalist and author. Thus she became 
an Abolitionist and entered, with her usual force and zeal, into that movement. 
She was a delegate to the World’s Anti-slavery Convention, which met the next 
year in London. With Lucretia Mott, she signed the first call for a T\ oinan s 
Rights Convention, which met in Seneca Falls, N. Y., on the 19th of July, 1848. 
Mrs. Stanton received and cared for the visitors, wrote the resolutions, declarations 
and aims of the organization, and had the satisfaction of being ridiculed throughout 
the United States.' Even her father, Judge Cady, imagined that she had gone crazy 
and journeyed all the way to Seneca Falls in order to endeavor to leason her out of 
her position; but she remained unshaken. Since that convention, Mis. Stanton has 
been one of the leaders of the movement in the United States. 

485 



































486 


ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 


Iii 1854, Mrs. Stanton addressed the New York Legislature, endeavoring to bring 
about such a change in the constitution as would enfranchise women, an extract 
from which, we insert in this volume. She delivered another address to the same 
body iii 1860 and again in 1867. In Kansas and in Michigan in ’67 and ’74, when 
those states were submitting the question of “Woman’s Suffrage” to the people, she 
did heroic work by canvassing and speaking throughout both of these Common¬ 
wealths. Until the year of 1890, she was President of the National Woman’s Suf¬ 
frage Association. In 1868, she ventured to run as candidate for Congress and, in 
her speech to the electors of the district, she announced her creed to be “ Free 
speech, free press, free men and free trade.” 

The “New York Herald” ventured to support her in this effort; but of course 
she was defeated, as she expected, her object being only to emphasize and advertise 
the principle of “ Woman Suffrage.” 

The literary works of Mrs. Stanton consist of her contributions to “The Revolu¬ 
tion,” a magazine published in New York City, of which she became editor in 
1868, Susan B. Anthony being the publisher. She was also joint-author of the 
“ History of Woman’s Suffrage ” of which three volumes have appeared. She has, 
also, lectured much and contributed to the secular press. 

Mrs. Stanton, with all her public works, has been a thoroughly domestic woman. 
She has a family of seven children, five sons and two daughters, all of whom were 
living up to a recent date and some of them have inherited the talents of their mother 
and bid fair to become famous. Mrs. Stanton possesses conversational powers of the 
highest order. In the light of recent developments, the retrospect of her long ca¬ 
reer must afford her unusual pleasure. She was met with bitterness, ridicule and 
misrepresentation at the beginning of her crusade. She has lived down all of this 
and has seen her cherished ambition fruited here and there, while many of the lead¬ 
ing men of the age in all sections of the country have been brought to look upon 
“Woman Suffrage ” as something to be desired; while in the minds of the public 
generally, the seed of thoughts sown by her are so fast rooting themselves and 
springing up, that she looks with confidence forward to the early realization of her 
hopes—the enfranchisement of woman. 


—•o*- 


A PLEA FOR EQUAL RIGHTS, 


Delivered at Seneca Falls, N. Y., on the assembling of the first Woman-Suffragist Convention, July 19, 1848. Mrs. 

Stanton begins by saying : 


SHOULD feel exceedingly diffident to ap¬ 
pear before you at this time, having never 
before spoken in public, were I not nerved 
by a sense of right and duty. 

[After delivering a masterly and eloquent argument of 
nearly two hours length announcing the principles and set¬ 
ting forth the arguments which have since signalized the 
movement, Mrs. Stanton closed in the following eloquent 
strain :] 

Our churches are multiplying on all sides, our mis¬ 
sionary societies, Sunday Schools, and prayer meet¬ 
ings and innumerable charitable and reform organiza¬ 



tions are all in operation, but still the tide of vice is 
swelling, and threatens the destruction of everything, 
and the battlements of righteousness are weak 
against the raging elements of sin and death. 
Verily the world waits the coming of some new ele¬ 
ment, some purifying power, some spirit of mercy 
and love. The voice of woman has been silenced in 
the state, the church, and the home, but man cannot 
fulfill his destiny alone, he cannot redeem his race 
unaided. There are deep and tender cords of sym¬ 
pathy and love in the hearts of the down-fallen and 
oppressed that woman can touch more skilfully than 















ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 


487 


man. The world has never yet seen a truly great 
and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of 
woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at 
their source. It is vain to look for silver and gold 
from the mines of copper and lead. It is the wise 
mother that has the wise son. So long as your 
women are slaves you may throw your colleges and 
churches to the winds. You can’t have scholars and 
saints so long as your mothers are ground to powder 
between the upper and nether millstone of tyranny 
and lust. How seldom, now, is a father’s pride 
gratified, his fond hopes realized, in the budding 
genius of his son. The wife is degraded, made the 
mere creature of caprice, and the foolish son is 
heaviness to his heart. Truly are the sins of the 
father visited upon the children to the third and 
fourth generation. God, in his wisdom, has so linked 
the whole human family together, that any violence 
done at one end of the chain is felt throughout its 
length, and here, too, is the law of restoration, as in 
woman all have fallen, so in her elevation shall the 
race be recreated. “ Voices” were the visitors and 
advisers of Joan of Arc. Do not “voices” come to 
us daily from the haunts of poverty, sorrow, de¬ 
gradation and despair, already too long unheeded. 
Now is the time for the women of this country, if 
they would save our free institutions, to defend the 
right, to buckle on the armor that can best resist the 
keenest weapons of the enemy—contempt and ridi¬ 
cule. The same religious enthusiasm that nerved 


Joan of Arc to her work nerves us to ours. In 
every generation God calls some men and women fur 
the utterance of the truth, a heroic action, and our 
work to-day is the fulfilling of what has long since 
been foretold by the prophet—Joel ii. 28, “And 
it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour 
out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your 
daughters shall prophesy.” We do not expect 
our path will be strewn with the flowers of popular 
applause, but over the thorns of bigotry and preju¬ 
dice will be our way, and on our banners will beat 
the dark storm-clouds of opposition from those who 
have entrenched themselves behind the stormy bul¬ 
warks of custom and authority, and who have forti¬ 
fied their position by every means, holy and unholy. 
But we will steadfastly abide the result. Unmoved 
we will bear it aloft. Undauntedly we will unfurl it 
to the gale, for we know that the storm cannot rend 
from it a shred, that the electric flash will but more 
clearly show to us the glorious words inscribed upon 
it, “ Equality of Bights.” 

“ Then fear not thou to wind thy horn, 

Though elf and gnome thy courage scorn. 

Ask for the Castle’s King and Queen, 

Though rabble rout may rush between, 

Beat thee senseless to the ground, 

And in the dark beset thee round, 

Persist to a^k and it will come, 

Seek not for rest in humbler home, 

So shalt thou see what few have seen; 

The palace home of King and Queen.” 




MRS. STANTON’S ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW YORK. 

UNDER THE SANCTION OF THE STATE WOMAN’S RIGHTS CONVENTION. FEBRUARY 14, 1854. 


To the Legislature of the State of New York : 

HE tyrant, Custom, has been summoned 
before the bar of Common Sense. His 
majesty no longer awes the multitude— 
his sceptre is broken—his crown is trampled in 
the dust—the sentence of death is pronounced 
upon him. All nations, ranks and classes have, 
in turn, questioned and repudiated his authority; 
and now, that the monster is chained and caged, 
timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the 
face, and to demand of her brave sires and sons, who 
have struck stout blows for liberty, if, in this change 
of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief. 



Yes, gentlemen, in republican America, in the 
I nineteenth century, we, the daughters of the revolu¬ 
tionary heroes of ’76, demand at your hands the re¬ 
dress of our grievances—a revision of your state 
constitution—a new code of laws. * * * * 

We demand the full recognition of all our rights as 
citizens of the Empire State. We are persons; native, 
free-born citizens ; property-holders, tax-payers ; yet 
we are denied the exercise of our right to the elective 
franchise. We support ourselves, and, in part, your 
schools, colleges, churches, your poor-houses, jails, 
prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery of 
government, and yet we have no voice in your coun- 














488 


ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. 


cils. We have every qualification required by the 
constitution, necessary to the legal voter; but the one 
of sex. We are moral, virtuous and intelligent, and 
in all respects quite equal to the proud white man 
himself, and yet by your laws we are classed with 
idiots, lunatics and negroes; * * * * in 

fact, our legal position is lower than that of either; 
for the negro can be raised to the dignity of a voter 
if he possess himself of $250 ; the lunatic can vote in 
his moments of sanity, and the idiot, too, if he be a 
male one, and not more than nine-tenths a fool; but 
we, who have guided great movements of charity, 
established missions, edited journals, published works 
on history, economy and statistics ; who have governed 
nations, led armies, filled the professor’s chair, taught 
philosophy and mathematics to the savants of our 
age, discovered planets, piloted ships across the sea, 
are denied the most sacred rights of citizens, because, 
forsooth, we came not into this republic crowned with 
the dignity of manhood !***** 

* * * Now, gentlemen, we would fain know 

by what authority you have disfranchised one-half of 
the people of this state? * * * Would that 

the men who can sanction a constitution so opposed 
to the genius of this government, who can enact and 
execute laws so degrading to womankind, had sprung, 
Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, that 
the matrons of this republic need not blush to own 
their sons I * * * * Again w r e demand in 

criminal cases, that most sacred of all rights, trial 
by a jury of our own peers. The establishment of 
trial by jury is of so early a date that its beginning 
is lost in antiquity ; but the right of trial by a jury of 
one’s own peers is a great, progressive step of ad¬ 
vanced civilization. * * * * Would it not, 

in woman’s hour of trial at the bar, be some consola¬ 


tion to see that she was surrounded by the wise and 
virtuous of her own sex ; by those who had known 
the depth of a mother’s love and the misery of a 
lover’s falsehood; to know that to these she could 
make her confession, and from them receive her sen¬ 
tence? If so, then listen to our just demands and 
make such a change in your laws as will secure to 
every woman tried in your courts, an impartial jury. 
At this moment among the hundreds of women who 
are shut up in the prisons of this state, not one has 
enjoyed that most sacred of all her rights—that right 
which you would die to defend for yourselves—trial 
by a j ary of one’s peers. 

(After referring to the law relating to woman’s inability to 
make contracts; to own property and to control the property 
of her children after her husband’s death (except by special 
provision in his will) ; the inability of the wife to protect the 
family property against the drunken husband; her inability 
to prevent her children from being bound out for a term of 
years against her express wishes,—Mrs. Stanton closes her 
address in the following words:) 

For all these, then, we speak. If to this long list 
you add all the laboring women, who are loudly de¬ 
manding remuneration for their unending toil—those 
women who teach in our seminaries, academies and 
common schools for a miserable pittance, the widows, 
who are taxed without mercy ; the unfortunate ones 
in our work-houses, poor-houses and prisons ; who 
are they that we do not now represent ? But a small 
class of fashionable butterflies, who, through the 
short summer days, seek the sunshine and the flowers ; 
but the cool breezes of autumn and the hoary frosts 
of winter wall soon chase all these away; then; 
they too will need and seek protection, and through 
other lips demand, in their turn, justice and equity at 
your hands. 








FRANCES E. WILLARD, 


THE ORGANIZER AND HEAD OF THE W. C. T. U. 



ITH the latter years of this century a new power has made itself felt 
in the world—the power of organized womanhood. Fifty years ago 
such a body as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was not 
only unknown, but impossible; and fifty years ago the woman who 
has done more than any other to bring it into being was a bright, 
healthy child of five years, living at Oberlin, Ohio, whither her 
father and mother had moved from Monroe County, New York, where she was born 
in September, 1839. In 1846 there was another move westward, this time to Forest 
Home, near Janesville, Wisconsin. Here Miss Willard spent twelve years, in 
which she grew from a child to a woman. She had wise parents, who gave free 
rein to the romping, freedom-loving girl, and let her grow up “ near to nature’s 
heart.” She could ride a horse or fight a prairie fire “ just as well as a man.” 

After twelve years of life on Wisconsin prairies, the Willard family moved to 
Evanston, on the shore of Lake Michigan, just north of Chicago. Here Miss 
Willard began her work as a teacher, which she pursued in different institutions 
until 1870, when she was chosen president of Evanston College for Ladies. This 
place she filled until 1874, when she finally gave up teaching to enter upon a new 
and still larger work. 

In 1873 occurred in Ohio the memorable “ Women’s Crusade” against the rum 
shops. Bands of devoted women besieged the saloons for days and weeks together, 
entreating the saloon-keepers to cease selling liquor, praying and singing hymns 
incessantly in bar-rooms or on the sidewalks, until the men who kept them agreed 
to close them up, and in many cases emptied barrels of liquor into the gutters. 
This movement at once arrested Miss Willard’s attention. She saw in it the germ 
of a mighty power for good. She resigned her position as president of the college 
at Evanston, and threw all her energies into the anti-liquor movement. With her 
customary thoroughness she entered upon a systematic study of the subject of intem¬ 
perance and the sale of liquor, and of the different measures which had been under¬ 
taken to abate this mighty evil. She sought the counsel of Neal Dow and other 
leaders in the temperance cause. She joined in the crusade against liquor-selling 
in Pittsburgh, kneeling in prayer on the sawdust-covered floors of the saloons, and 
leading the host in singing “ Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” and “ Rock of Ages,” in 
strains which awed and melted the hearts of the multitude thronging the streets. 
The result of her work was a determination to combine in one mighty organization 

489 
























490 


FRANCES E. WILLARD. 


tlie many separate bands of women temperance workers which had sprung up over 
the country; and this was achieved in the autumn of 1874, in the organization at 
Cleveland of that wonderful body, the National Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union. The resolution which was adopted at that meeting, written by Miss Willard 
herself, beautifully expresses the spirit in which they entered upon the work. It 
read as follows :— 


“ Resolved , That, recognizing that our cause is and will be contested by mighty, determined, and relent¬ 
less forces, we will, trusting in Him who is the Prince of Peace, meet argument with argument, misjudg- 
ment with patience, denunciation with kindness, and all our difficulties and dangers with prayer.” 


From that time Miss Willard’s life is the history of the Woman’s Christian 
Temperance Union. Like the “handful of corn in the tops of the mountains,” all 
over this and in other lands it lias taken root and grown until the fruit does indeed 
“ shake like Lebanon.” In almost every corner of the United States is a subordinate 
organization of some sort, a local union, a children’s band, a young woman’s circle, 
or perhaps all of these. It has built the great “ Temperance Temple,” one of the 
largest of the immense business buildings in Chicago. It has organized a large 
publishing business, from whose busy presses temperance literature is constantly 
being circulated in all parts of the country. It has by its political power made and 
unmade governors, senators, and representatives; and it lias done much to hasten the 
time when women shall take an equal share in the government of church and state. 
In all this work the head and guiding spirit has been Frances E. Willard. 

Overwork has of late somewhat impaired her health, and made travel and rest 
abroad necessary. But in whatever corner of the world she may dwell, there is 
always a warm corner kept for her in the many thousand hearts and homes that have 
been cheered and brightened by her work “ for God and home and native land.” 

Miss Willard’s friend and co-worker, Hannah Whitall Smith, says of her: 
“Miss Willard has been to me the embodiment of all that is lovely and good and 
womanly and strong and noble and tender in human nature. She has done more to 
enlarge our sympathies, widen our outlook, and develop our gifts, than any man or 
any other woman of our time.” 


HOME PROTECTION. 


(FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN PHILADELPHIA, 1876.) 



ONGER ago than I shall tell, my father 
returned one night to the far-off Wisconsin 
home where I was reared, and sitting by 
my mother’s chair, with a child’s attentive ear I 
listened to their words. He told us of the news that 
day had brought about Neal Dow, and the great fight 
for Prohibition down in Maine, and then he said: 
“ I wonder if poor, rum-cursed Wisconsin will ever 
get a law like that ? ” And mother rocked awhile in 
silence, in the dear old chair I love, and then she 


gently said: “ Yes, Josiah, there’ll be such a law all 
over the land some day, when women vote.” 

My father had never heard her say as much before. 
He was a great conservative; so he looked tremen¬ 
dously astonished, and replied, in his keen, sarcastic 
voice: “ And pray, how will you arrange it so that 
women shall vote?” Mother’s chair went to and 
fro a little faster for a minute, and then, looking not 
into his face, but into the flickering flames of the 
grate, she slowly answered: “ Well, I say to you, as 












FRANCES E. WILLARD. 


491 


the Apostle Paul said to his jailor: ‘ You have put 
us into prison, we being Romans, and you must come 
and take us out.’ ” 

That was a seed-thought in a girl’s brain and heart. 
Years passed on, in which nothing more was said 
upon this dangerous theme. My brother grew to 
manhood, and soon after he was twenty-one years old 
he went with father to vote. Standing by the window, 
a girl of sixteen years, a girl of simple, homely fancies, 
not at all strong-minded, and altogether ignorant of 
the world, I looked out as they drove away, my father 
and brother, and as I looked I felt a strange ache in 
my heart, and tears sprang to my eyes. Turning to 
my sister Mary, who stood beside me, I saw that the 
dear little innocent seemed wonderfully sober, too. 
I said, “ Don’t you wish that we could go with them 
when we are old enough ? Don’t we love our country 
just as well as they do?'’ and her little frightened 
voice piped out: “Yes, of course we ought. Don’t 
I know that; but you mustn’t tell a soul—not mother, 
even; we should be called strong-minded.” 

In all the years since then, I have kept those 
things, and many others like them, and pondered 
them in my heart; but two years of struggle in this 
temperance reform have shown me, as they have ten 
thousand other women, so clearly and so impressively, 
my duty, that I have passed the Rubicon of Silence, 
and am ready for any battle that shall be involved in 
this honest declaration of the faith that is within me. 
“ Fight behind masked batteries a little longer,” 
whisper good friends and true. So I have been 
fighting hitherto; but it is a style of warfare alto¬ 
gether foreign to my temperament and mode of life. 
Reared on the prairies, I seemed pre-determined to 
join the calvary force in this great spiritual war, and 
I must tilt a free lance henceforth on the splendid 
battlefield of this reform; where the earth shall soon 
be shaken by the onset of contending hosts, where 
legions of valiant soldiers are deploying ; where to the 
grand encounter marches to-day a great army, gentle 


of mien and mild of utterance, but with hearts for 
any fate ; where there are trumpets and bugles calling 
strong souls onward to a victory which Heaven might 
envy, and 

“Where, behind the dim Unknown, 

Standeth God within the shadow, 

Keeping watch above His own.” 

I thought that women ought to have the ballot 
as I paid the hard-earned taxes upon my mother’s 
cottage home—but I never said as much—somehow 
the motive did not command my heart. For my own 
sake, I had not courage, but I have for thy sake, 
dear native land, for thy necessity is as much greater 
than mine as thy transcendant hope is greater than 
the personal interest of thy humble child. For love 
of you, heart-broken wives, whose tremulous lips 
have blessed me; for love of you, sweet mothers, 
who in the cradle’s shadow kneel this night, beside 
your infant sons; and you, sorrowful little children, 
who listen at this hour, with faces strangely old, for 
him whose footsteps frighten you; for love of you, 
have I thus spoken. 

Ah, it is women who have given the costliest 
hostages to fortune. Out into the battle of life they 
have sent their best beloved, with fearful odds against 
them, with snares that men have legalized and set 
for them on every hand. Beyond the arms that held 
them long, their boys have gone forever. Oh ! by 
the danger they have dared ; by the hours of patient 
watching over beds where helpless children lay; by 
the incense of ten thousand prayers wafted from their 
gentle lips to Heaven, I charge you give them power 
to protect, along life’s treacherous highway, those 
whom they have so loved. Let it no longer be that 
they must sit back among the shadows, hopelessly 
mourning over their strong staff broken, and their 
beautiful rod ; but when the sons they love shall go 
forth to life’s battle, still let their mothers walk beside 
them, sweet and serious, and clad in the garments of 
power. 







LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 


AUTHOE OF 


u 


AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF THAT CLASS OF AMERICANS 
CALLED AFRICANS.” 



EXT to Harriet Beecher Stowe, no woman, perhaps, has contributed 
more to the liberation of the black man than has the subject of this 
sketch. It was Lydia Maria Child who wrote the famous reply to 
Governor Wise, of Virginia, after the hanging of John Brown, and 
it was to her that the wife of the Senator from Massachusetts, the 
author of the “ Fugitive Slave Law,” wrote, threatening her with 
future damnation for her activity against the operation of that law. Mrs. Child’s 
reply to Governor Wise, of Virginia, and Mrs. Mason was published with their 
letters in pamphlet form, and three hundred thousand copies were quickly distri¬ 
buted throughout the North. On the altars of how many thousand hearts they 
kindled the fires of universal liberty of person can never be known; but it is certain 
that after the appearance of this pamphlet, and Mrs. Stowe’s immortal book, the fate 
of slavery in the United States was sealed, and the rising star of the black man’s 
liberty and the setting sun of the accursed institution simultaneously rose and 
fell. 

But Lydia M. Child was more than an abolitionist. She was one of the most 
prolific and varied writers of the second and third quarters of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, as subsequent reference to her books and letters will show. 

Lydia M. Francis was born in Medford, Massachusetts, February 11, 1802, and 
was the daughter of David Francis. Her early education was received at the hands 
of an odd, old woman and her brother, Converse Francis, afterwards Professor of 
Theology in Harvard College. After leaving private instruction, she studied in 
public schools, and subsequently spent a year in the seminary. From 1814 to 1820 
she lived with her married sister in Maine. At the a^e of eighteen she returned 
to Watertown, Massachusetts, to live with her brother. He discovered her literary 
ability and encouraged her to study and write. In 1823 “Hobomok,” her first 
story, was published. This proved to be successful, and she issued another book, 
under the title of “ Rebels,” which was also well received. She then brought out, 
in rapid succession, “The Mother’s Book,” “The Girl’s Book,” “The History of 
Women,” and “The Frugal Housewife.” The first passed through twelve English 
and one German editions, while the last reached thirty-five editions. In 1826 she 
began to write for children, and published her “Juvenile Miscellanies.” In 1828 
she became the wife of David Lee Child, a lawyer, and removed to Boston, Massa- 

492 


























LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 


493 


cliusetts, where they settled. In 1831 both wife and husband became interested in 
the then new “ Anti-Slavery Movement.” Mr. Child became the leader of the Anti- 
Slavery Party; and, in 1833, Mrs. Child published her famous book, entitled “An 
Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Americans Called Africans.” When this work 
appeared, Dr. Channing, it is said, was so delighted with it that he at once walked 
from Boston to Box bury to see the author, though a stranger to him, and thank her 
for it. This was nearly twenty years before “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appeared, and, 
so far as the writer is aware, was the first book ever published—in America at least 
—opposing the institution of slavery. 

Tiiere were at this time in the North very few people who were openly opposed 
to slavery, and the appearance of the book cut Mrs. Child loose from the friends of 
her youth. Both social and literary circles, which had formerly welcomed her, 
now shut their doors against her entrance. She was at this time editing a magazine, 
which had a large subscription, and her books were selling well. Suddenly, the 
sale of her books fell off, subscriptions were withdrawn from her paper, and her life 
became one of ostracized isolation and a battle for existence. The effect of this, 
was, however, to stimulate rather than intimidate her zeal in the cause which she 
espoused. Through it all she bore her trouble with the patience and courage 
worthy of a heroine, and in the midst of her disappointment and labors found time 
to produce the “Life of Madame Boland ” and “Baroness de Stael,” and also her 
Greek romance “ Philothea.” At the same time, with her husband, she editorially 
supervised the “Anti-Slavery Standard,” in which was published those admirable 
“Letters from New York,” and, during the same troublous times, prepared her 
three-volumed work on “The Progress of Beligious Ideas,” which evinces a depth 
of study and inquiry into the history of various religions from the most ancient 
Hindoo records to recent times that perhaps no woman in more modern times has 
approached. In 184Q Mr. and Mrs. Child removed to New York City, where they 
resided until 1844, when they removed to Way land, Massachusetts, where she con¬ 
tinued to reside for the next thirty-six years of her life, dying there October 20, 
1880, in the seventy-eighth year of her age. She lived to see a reversal of the 
opinions that greeted her first plea for the personal liberty of all mankind, and 
became once more the honored centre of a wide circle of influential friends. 

The books of Mrs. Child are numerous. We mention beside those referred to 
above “Flowers for Children,” three volumes (1844-1846); “Fact and Fiction” 
(1846); “The Power of Kindness” (1851); “A True Life of Isaac P. Hopper 
(1853); “Autumnal Leaves” (1856); “Looking Toward Sunset” (1864); “The 
Freedman’s Book” (1865); “Maria” (1867); and “Aspirations of the World” 
(1878), which was the last work of the long and busy life of the grand, old woman 
—issued just three years before her death. In 1882, two years after her demise, a 
volume of her letters was published with an introduction by the Anti-Slavery poet, 
Whittier, and an appendix by the Anti-Slavery orator, Wendell Phillips. 



494 


LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 


A LITTLE WAIF. 

(FROM “LETTERS FROM NEW YORK.”) 


HE other day I went forth for exercise 
merely, without other hope of enjoyment 
than a farewell to the setting sun, on the 
now deserted Battery, and a fresh kiss from the 
breezes of the sea, ere they passed through the pol¬ 
luted city, bearing healing on their wings. I had not 
gone far, when I met a little ragged urchin, about 
four years old, with a heap of newspapers, “ more big 
than he could carry,” under his little arm, and another 
clenched in his small red fist. The sweet voice of 
childhood was prematurely cracked into shrillness by 
screaming street cries, at the top of his lungs, and he 
looked blue, cold and disconsolate. May the angels 
guard him! How I wanted to warm him in my 
heart. 

I stood looking after him as he went shivering 
along. Imagination followed him to the miserable 
cellar where he probably slept on dirty straw. I saw 
him flogged after his day of cheerless toil, because he 
had failed to bring home pence enough for his parents’ 
grog; I saw wicked ones come muttering, and beckon¬ 
ing between his young soul and heaven ; they tempted 
him to steal to avoid the dreaded beating. I saw him 
years after, bewildered and frightened, in the police- 
office surrounded by hard faces. Their law-jargon 
conveyed no meaning to his ear, awakened no slum¬ 


bering moral sense, taught him no clear distinction 
between right and wrong; but from their cold, harsh 
tones, and heartless merriment, he drew the inference 
that they were enemies; and as such he hated them. 
At that moment, one tone like a mother’s voice might 
have wholly changed his earthly destiny ; one kind 
word of friendly counsel might have saved him—as 
if an angel, standing in the genial sunlight, had 
thrown to him one end of a garland, and gently 
diminishing the distance between them, had drawn 
him safely out of the deep and tangled labyrinth, 
where false echoes and winding paths conspired to 
make him lose his way. But watchmen and con¬ 
stables were around him, and they have small fellow¬ 
ship with angels. The strong impulses that might 
have become overwhelming love for his race are per¬ 
verted to the bitterest hatred. He tries the uni¬ 
versal resort of weakness against force; if they are 
too strong for him, he will be too cunning for them. 
Their cunning is roused to detect his cunning ; and 
thus the gallows-game is played, with interludes of 
damnable merriment from police reports, whereat the 
heedless multitude laugh ; while angels weep over the 
slow murder of a human soul. God grant the little 
shivering carrier-boy a brighter destiny than I have 
foreseen for him. 





TO WHITTIER ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. 


THANK thee, friend, for words of cheer, 
That made the path of duty clear, 

When thou and I were young and strong 
To wrestle with a mighty wrong. 

And now, when lengthening shadows come, 

And this world’s work is nearly done, 

I thank thee for thy genial ray 



That prophesies a brighter day 

When we can work, with strength renewed, 

In clearer light, for surer good. 

God bless thee, friend, and give thee peace, 
Till thy fervent spirit finds release ; 

And may we meet, in worlds afar, 

My Morning and my Evening Star! 




POLITENESS. 



N politeness, as in many other things con¬ 
nected with the formation of character, 
people in general begin outside, when they 
should begin inside; instead of beginning with the 
heart, and trusting that to form* the manners, they 



begin with the manners, and trust the heart to chance 
influences. The golden rule contains the very life 
and soul of politeness. Children may be taught to 
make a graceful courtesy or a gentlemanly bow; but 
unless they have likewise been taught to abhor what 

























LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 


495 


is selfish, and always prefer another’s comfort and 
pleasure to their own, their politeness will be entirely 
artificial, and used only when it is their interest to use 
it. On the other hand, a truly benevolent, kind- 


hearted person will always be distinguished for what 
is called native politeness, though entirely ignorant of 
the conventional forms of society. 


FLOWERS. 


OW the universal heart of man blesses flow¬ 
ers ! They are wreathed round the cradle, 
the marriage-altar, and the tomb. The 
Persian in the far East delights in their perfume, and 
writes his love in nosegays ; while the Indian child of 
the far West clasps his hands with glee, as he gathers 
the abundant blossoms,—the illuminated scripture of 
the prairies. The Cupid of the ancient Hindoos 
tipped his arrows with flowers; and orange-buds are 
the bridal crown with us, a nation of yesterday. 



blowers garlanded the Grecian altar, and they hang 
in votive wreaths before the Christian shrine. 

All these are appropriate uses. Flowers should 
deck the brow of the youthful bride ; for they are in 
themselves a lovely type of marriage. They should 
twine round the tomb ; for their perpetually renewed 
beauty is a symbol of the resurrection. They should 
festoon the altar; for their fragrance and their 
beauty ascend in perpetual worship before the Most 
High. 


UNSELFISHNESS. 


(From “Letters from New York.”) 


FOUND the Battery unoccupied, save by 
children, whom the weather made as merry 
as birds. Every thing seemed moving to 
the vernal tune of 

“Oh, Brignall banks are wild and fair, 

And Greta woods are green.”— Scott's Hokeby. 

To one who was chasing her hoop, I said, smiling, 
“ You are a nice little girl.” She stopped, looked up 
in my face, so rosy and happy, and, laying her hand 
on her brother’s shoulder, exclaimed, earnestly, “And 
he is a nice little boy, too ! ” It was a simple, child¬ 
like act, but it brought a warm gush into my heart. 
Blessings on all unselfishness ! on all that leads us in 



love to prefer one another ! Here lies the secret of 
universal harmony; this is the diapason which would 
bring us all into tune. Only by losing ourselves can 
we find ourselves. How clearly does the divine voice 
within us proclaim this, by the hymn of joy it sings, 
whenever we witness an unselfish deed or hear an 
unselfish thought. Blessings on that loving little 
one! She made the city seem a garden to me. I 
kissed my hand to her, as I turned off in quest of 
the Brooklyn ferry. The sparkling waters swarmed 
with boats, some of which had taken a big ship by 
the hand, and were leading her out to sea, as the 
prattle of childhood often guides wisdom into the 
deepest and broadest thought. 






















ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON. 



N 1861, a young girl of nineteen years, sprang like a Minerva fully 
armed into the moral and political arena, and for a time stirred 
the hearts of those who fell under her influence, as few other 
speakers have done. From the day she first appeared before the 
public, she feared not to utter the boldest truths and most scathing 
rebukes of sin in high places. Whether the principle for which she 
strove is right or wrong the world of course will judge for itself, but that this woman 
was honest, logical, sincere, and eloquent in advocacy, no one who ever listened to 
her earnest appeals or read what she wrote could for one moment doubt. 

Anna E. Dickinson was born October 28, 1842, in the city of Philadelphia. 
When she was two years old her father died, leaving the family in straightened 
circumstances. Her parents belonged to the Society of Friends, and Anna was 
sent in her early years to the Friends’ Free School. At the same time she had 
little ways of her own in earning money, which she carefully husbanded and spent 
for books. When fourteen years old she made her appearance before the public by 
writing an article on slavery, which was published in “The Liberator,” and in 1857 
made her debut as a public S 2 )eaker by replying to a man who had delivered a tirade 
against women. From that time she spoke frequently on the subjects of slavery and 
temperance. In 1859 and 1860 she taught a country school, and in 1861 became 
an employee in the Philadelphia Mint, from which position she was soon dismissed, 
because in a speech in West Chester she declared the battle of Ball’s Bluff had been 
lost through the treason of General McClellan. Thus cast upon the world she 
entered immediately the lecture platform. William Lloyd Garrison heard one of 
her addresses and named her “The Girl Orator.” He invited her to speak in 
Boston, Massachusetts, where she delivered a famous address on the “National 
Crisis ” in Music Hall. From there she entered upon a lecture tour, speaking in 
New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, and until the close of 
the war devoted her time to lecturing. In Washington, D. C., in 1864, the proceeds 
of one of her lectures, amounting to a thousand dollars, she devoted to the Freed- 
men’s Belief Society. She was frequently called to the hospitals and the camps, 
where she addressed the soldiers. After the war she took up the cudgel in favor of 
woman’s suffrage. She visited Utah to inquire into the condition of women there, 
and returning delivered her famous lecture on the “ Whited Sepulchres.” Other 
prominent lectures were entitled “Demagogues and Workingmen,” “Joan of Arc,” 
“ Between Us Be Truth,” “ Platform and Stage.” 

496 































ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON. 


497 


being a sort of 


j\I iss Dickinson made tlie mistake of her life when she deserted the platform for 
the stage in 1877. She wrote a play entitled “ A Crown of Thorns,” in which she 
attempted ^ to “ star. ’ She next assayed Shakespearian tragic roles, including 
“ Hamlet ” and others, and afterwards gave dramatic readings. In all of these 
attempts she was out of her element, therefore, unsuccessful, and returned to the 
lecture platform, but continued to write plays. The only one of these, however, 
which was even moderately popular with the masses was entitled “ The American 
Girl,” played by Fanny Davenport. The noted actor, John McCullough, was 
preparing to produce her “ Aurelian,” when the failure of his powers came and it 
was never put upon the stage. Miss Dickinson also wrote a number of books. 
Among them we mention the novel “ What Answer;” “A Paying Investment,” and 
“ A Ragged Register of People, Places and Opinions,” the latter 
diary, and perhaps the most valuable of the. lot. 

The last ten years added other mistakes and misfortunes which have tended to 
detract from the well-earned fame of her earlier life. These difficulties began with a 
suit brought against the Republican managers in 1888 for services rendered in the 
Harrison presidential campaign. Following this came family difficulties. Her 
health failed and she was placed by her relatives for a time in an insane asylum, 
from which she was eventually released, but was involved in further law-suits. Let 
it be said to her credit, however, that while she acquired an ample fortune from her 
lectures, she has given away the bulk of it to all kinds of charities, and it is from 
the money that she has made and her liberal disposition to dispose of it for the 
benefit of humanity, rather than to her relatives, which has involved her in much 
of the family trouble. 

As an orator Miss Dickinson was a woman of singular powers. Together with a 
most excellent judgment, and a keen, analytic mind, enabling her to dissect theories 
and motives, she was a mistress of sarcasm, pathos and wit, and possessed that rare 
eloquence and dramatic fervor which go to make the great orator, and which can be 
understood only by those who have heard her on the platform. In her work she 
was always unique, and while as a whole her books and plays were not popular 
successes they contain passages of undisputed marks of genius. 


WHY COLORED MEN SHOULD ENLIST IN THE ARMY. 


Extract from speech delivered at a mass meeting held in Philadelphia, July 6, 1863, for the promotion of 
enlistment of colored men in the Union Army. The efficiency of colored troops having been demonstrated 
by recent battles in the Southwest, several hundred gentlemen ot Philadelphia addressed a memorial to the 
Secretary of War, asking authority to raise three regiments for three years ot the war, from among the 
colored population of Pennsylvania. Permission to this effect was promptly given. Accordingly a mass 
meeting was called to arouse the colored people to prompt action. Jiulge Kelly and Frederick Douglass 
spoke at the same meeting, but Miss Dickinson’s appeal was the oratorical feature of the occasion. We 
quote the extract below as a specimen of her eloquence. 


RUE, through the past we have advocated 
the use of the black man. For what end? 
To save ourselves. We wanted them as 
shields, as barriers, as walls of defence. We would 
not even say to them, fight beside us. We would 
put them in the front; their brains contracted, their 

3 2 



souls dwarfed, their manhood stunted; mass them 
together ; let them die ! That will cover and protect 
us. Now we hear the voice of the people, solemn 
and sorrowful, saying, “ We have wronged you 
enough ; you have suffered enough ; we ask no more 
at your hands; we stand aside, and let you fight 









498 


ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON. 


for your own manhood, your future, your race.” 
(Applause.) Anglo-Africans, we need you; yet it 
is not because of this need that I ask you to go into 
the ranks of the regiments forming to fight in this 
war. My cheeks would crimson with shame, while 
my lips put the request that could be answered, 
“ Your soldiers ? ” why don’t you give us the same 
bounty, and the same pay as the rest? ” I have no 
reply to that. (Sensation.) 

But for yourselves; because, after ages of watch¬ 
ing and agony, your day is breaking; because your 
hour is come ; because you hold the hammer which, 
upheld or falling, decides your destiny for woe or 
weal; because you have reached the point from which 
you must sink, generation after generation, century 
after century, into deeper depths, into more absolute 
degradation; or mount to the heights of glory and 
fame. 

The cause needs you. This is not our war, not a 
war for territory; not a war for martial power, for 
mere victory; it is a war of the races, of the ages; 
the stars and stripes is the people’s flag of the world ; 
the world must be gathered under its folds, the black 
man beside the white. (Cheers and applause.) 

Thirteen dollars a month and bounty are good; 
liberty is better. Ten dollars a month and no bounty 
are bad ; slavery is worse. The two alternatives are 
put before you; you make your own future. The 
to be will, in a little while, do you justice. Soldiers 
will be proud to welcome as comrades, as brothers, 
the black men of Port Hudson and Milliken's Bend. 
Congress, next winter, will look out through the fog 
and mist of Washington, and will see how, when 
Pennsylvania was invaded and Philadelphia threatened, 
while white men haggled over bounty and double pay 
to defend their own city, their own homes, with the 
tread of armed rebels almost heard in their streets; 
black men, without bounty, without pay, without 
rights or the promise of any, rushed to the beleagured 
capital, and were first in their offers of life or of 
death. (Cheers and applause.) Congress will say, 


“ These men are soldiers; we will pay them as such ; 
these men are marvels of loyalty, self-sacrifice, cour¬ 
age ; we will give them a chance of promotion.” 
History will write, “ Behold the unselfish heroes; 
the eager martyrs of this war.” (Applause.) You 
hesitate because you have not all. Your brothers and 
sisters of the South cry out, “ Come to help us, we 
have nothing.” Father ! you hesitate to send your 
boy to death ; the slave father turns his face of 
dumb entreaty to you, to save his boy from the death 
in life; the bondage that crushes soul and body to¬ 
gether. Shall your son go to his aid ? Mother ! 
you look with pride at the young manly face and 
figure, growing and strengthening beside you ! he is 
yours ; your own. God gave him to you. From the 
lacerated hearts, the wrung souls of other mothers, 
comes the wail, “ My child, my child; give me back 
my child ! ” The slave-master heeds not; the govern¬ 
ment is tardy; mother! the prayer comes to you; 
will you falter ? 

Young man, rejoicing in the hope, the courage, the 
will, the thews and muscles of young manhood—the 
red glare of this war falls on the faces and figures of 
other young men, distorted with suffering, writhing in 
agony, wrenching their manacles and chains—shout¬ 
ing with despairing voices to you for help—shall it 
be withheld ? (Cries of No ! No!) I 

The slave will, be freed—with or without you. 
The conscience and heart of the people have decreed 
that. (Applause.) Xerxes scourging the Helles¬ 
pont, Canute commanding the waves to roll back, 
are but types of that folly which stands up and says 
to this majestic wave of public opinion, “ Thus far.” 
The black man will be a citizen, only by stamping his 
right to it in his blood. Now or never! You have 
not homes!—gain them. You have not liberty!— 
gain it. You have not a flag !—gain it. You have 
not a country !—be written down in history as the 
race who made one for themselves, and saved one for 
another. (Immense cheering.) 









* 

* 

* 


Miscellaneous Masterpieces, 

FROM VARIOUS AMERICAN AND ANONYMOUS AUTHORS, 

CHOSEN WITH A VIEW TO THEIR GENERAL POPULARITY OR ADAPTATION 

FOR READING AND RECITATION 


HOME, SWEET HOME. 


THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. 


John Howard Payne, the author of the following 
beautiful and perhaps most widely known song in 
the world, was born in New York, on the ninth of 
June, 1792. His remarkable career as an actor and 
dramatist belongs to the history of the stage. As a 
poet he will be known only by a single song. He 
died at Tunis, in 1852, where he was for some time 
Consul for the United States. 


ID pleasures and palaces though we may 
roam, 

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like 
home ! 

A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, 
Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with 
elsewhere. 

Home ! home, sweet home! 

There’s no place like home! 



An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain, 

Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again ; 

The birds singing gayly that come at my call: 

Give me these, and the peace of mind, dearer than 
all. 

Home! sweet, sweet home ! 

There’s no place like home. 


Francis Scott Key, the author of the following 
patriotic poem, was born in Frederick County, Mary¬ 
land, August 1, 1779. He was a very able and eloquent 
lawyer, and one of the most respectable gentlemen 
whose lives have ever adorned American society. He 
was a man of much literary cultivation and taste, and 
his religious poems are not without merit. He died very 
suddenly at Baltimore on January 11, 1843. In 1814, 
when the British fleet was at the mouth of the Po¬ 
tomac River, and intended to attack Baltimore, Mr. 
Key and Mr. Skinner were sent in a vessel with a 
flag of truce to obtain the release of some prisoners 
the English had taken in their expedition against 
Washington. They did not succeed, and were told 
that they would be detained till after the attack had 
been made on Baltimore. Accordingly, they went 
in their own vessel, strongly guarded, with the Brit¬ 
ish fleet, and when they came within sight of Fort 
McHenry, a short distance below the city, the}'' could 
see the American flag flying on the ramparts. As 
the day closed in, the bombardment of the fort com¬ 
menced, and Mr. Key and Mr. Skinner remained on 
deck all night, watching with deep anxiety every 
shell that was fired. While the bombardment con¬ 
tinued, it was sufficient proof that the fort had not 
surrendered. It suddenly ceased some time before 
day; but as they had no communication with any of 
the enemy’s ships, they did not know whether the 
fort had surrendered and their homes and friends 
were in danger, or the attack upon it had been aban¬ 
doned. They paced the deck the rest of the night in 


499 

























500 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


painful suspense, watching with intense anxiety for 
the return of day. At length the light came, and 
they saw that “our flag was still there,” and soon 
they were informed that the attack had failed. In 
the fervor of the moment, Mr. Key took an old letter 
from his pocket, and on its back wrote the most of 
this celebrated song, finishing it as soon as he reached 
Baltimore. He showed it to his friend Judge Nichol¬ 
son, who was so pleased with it that he placed it at 
once in the hands of the printer, and in an hour after 
it was all over the city, and hailed with enthusiasm, 
and took its place at once as a national song. Thus, 
this patriotic, impassioned ode became forever asso¬ 
ciated with the “Stars and Stripes.” 


! SAY, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, 
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s 
last gleaming; 

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, 
through the perilous fight, 

O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly 
streaming ? 

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, 
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still 
there; 

0! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave 
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave ? 

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the 
deep 

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence 
reposes, 

What is that which the breeze o’er the towering 
steep 

As it fitfully blows, half-conceals, half discloses? 
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam ; 
Its full glory reflected now shines on the stream : 

’Tis the star-spangled banner, 0 ! long may it wave 
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

And where is the band who so vauntingly swore, 

Mid the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, 

A home and a country they’d leave us no more ? 
Their blood hath wash’d out their foul footsteps’ 
pollution ; 

No refuge could save the hireling and slave 
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave, 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave 
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

0! thus be it ever, when freeman shall stand 

Between our loved home and the war’s desolation; 
Bless’d with victory and peace, may the heaven- 
rescued land 

Praise the power that hath made and preserved us 
a nation ! 

Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just, 

And this be our motto, “ In God is our trust,” 

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave 
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 



THE AMERICAN FLAG. 

BY JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. 

Born in New York, August 17, 1795 ; died Septem¬ 
ber 21, 1820. 

HEN Freedom from her mountain height, 
Unfurled her standard to the air, 

She tore the azure robe of night, 

And set the stars of glory there ! 

She mingled with its gorgeous dyes 
The milky baldric of the skies, 

And striped its pure celestial white 
With streakings of the morning light; 

Then, from his mansion in the sun, 

She called her eagle-bearer down, 

And gave into his mighty hand 
The symbol of her chosen land ! 

Majestic monarch of the cloud ! 

Who rear’st aloft thy regal form, 

To hear the tempest trumping loud, 

And see the lightning lances driven, 

When strive the warriors of the storm, 

And rolls the tlmnder-drum of heaven— 

Child of the sun ! to thee ’tis given 
To guard the banner of the free, 

To hover in the sulphur smoke, 

To ward away the battle-stroke, 

And bid its blendings shine afar, 

Like rainbows on the cloud of war, 

The harbingers of victory ! 

Flag of the brave ! thy folds shall fly, 

The sign of hope and triumph high ! 

When speaks the signal-trumpet tone, 

And the long line comes gleaming on, 

Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, 

Has dimmed the glistening bayonet, 

Each soldier’s eye shall brightly turn 
To where thy sky-born glories burn, 

And, as his springing steps advance, 

Catch war and vengeance from the glance. 

And when the cannon-mouthings loud 
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, 

And gory sabres rise and fall 
Like shoots of flame on midnight’s pall, 

Then shall thy meteor glances glow, 

And cowering foes shall shrink beneath 
Each gallant arm that strikes below 
That lovely messenger of death. 

Flag of the seas ! on ocean wave 
Thy stars shall glitter o’er the brave 
When death, careering on the gale, 

Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, 

And frighted waves rush wildly back 
Before the broadside’s reeling rack, 












MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


501 


Each dying wanderer of the sea 
Shall look at once to heaven and thee, 

And smile to see thy splendors fly 
In triumph o’er his closing eye. 

Flag of the free heart’s hope and home, 

By angel hands to valor given ! 

Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, 

And all thy hues were born in heaven. 
Forever float that standard sheet! 

Where breathes the foe but falls before us! 
With freedom’s soil beneath our feet, 

And freedom’s banner streaming o’er us! 


The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, 
Said: “ E’en the blindest man 
Can tell what this resembles most; 

Deny the fact who can, 

This marvel of an elephant, 

Is very like a fan!” 

The Sixth no sooner had begun 

O 

About the beast to grope, 

Than, seizing on the swinging tail 
That fell within his scope, 

“I see,” quoth he, “the elephant 
Is very like a rope!” 


BLIND MAN AND THE ELEPHANT. 

BY JOHN GODFREY SAXE. 

Born in Vermont, June 2, 1816; died in Albany, 
N. Y., March 31, 1887. 

T was six men of Indostan 

To learning much inclined, 

Who went to see the elephant 

(Though all of them were blind,) 

That each by observation 
Might satisfy his mind. 



And so these men of Indostan 
Disputed loud and long, 

Each in his own opinion 
Exceeding stiff and strong, 

Though each was partly in the right. 
And all were in the wrong! 


MORAL. 

So, oft in theologic wars 
The disputants, I ween, 
Rail on in utter ignorance 
Of what each other mean, 
And prate about an elephant 
Not one of them has seen! 


The First approached the elephant, 

And, happening to fall 
Against his broad and sturdy side, 

At once began to bawl: 

“ God bless me! but the elephant 
Is very like a wall! ” 

The Second, feeling of the tusk, 

Cried: “ Ho! what have we here 
So very round and smooth and sharp? 

To me ’tis mighty clear 
This wonder of an elephant 
Is very like a spear!” 

The Third approached the animal, 

And, happening to take 
The squirming trunk within his hands, 
Thus boldly up and spake: 

“I see,” quoth he, “the elephant 
Is very like a snake!” 

The Fourth reached out his eager hand, 
And felt about the knee, 

“ What most this wondrous beast is like 
Is mighty plain,” quoth he; 

“Tis clear enough the elephant 
Is very like a tree!” 


-K>«- 

HAIL, COLUMBIA! 

BY JOSEPH HOPKINSON. 

Born 1770 ; died 1842. The following interesting 
story is told concerning the writing of this now fa¬ 
mous patriotic song. “It was written in the summer 
of 1798, when war with France was thought to be 
inevitable. Congress was then in session in Phila¬ 
delphia, deliberating upon that important subject, 
and acts of hostility had actually taken place. The 
contest between England and France was raging, 
and the people of the United States were divided into 
parties for the one side or the other, some thinking 
that policy and duty required us to espouse the cause 
of republican France, as she was called ; while others 
were for connecting ourselves with England, under 
the belief that she was the great conservative power 
of good principles and safe government. The viola¬ 
tion of our rights by both belligerents was forcing us 
from the just and wise policy of President Washing¬ 
ton, which was to do equal justice to both, to take 
part with neither, but to preserve a strict and honest 
neutrality between them. The prospect of a rup¬ 
ture with France was exceedingly offensive to the 
portion of the people who espoused her cause ; and 
the violence of the spirit of party has never risen 
higher, I think not so high, in our country, as it did 
at that time, upon that question. The theatre was 
then open in our city. A young man belonging to it, 
whose talent was as a singer, was about to take his 
benefit. I had known him when he was at school. 
On this acquaintance, he called on me one Saturday 


















502 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


afternoon, his benefit being announced for the follow¬ 
ing Monday. His prospects were very dishearten¬ 
ing; but be said that if be could get a patriotic song 
adapted to the tune of the ‘President’s March’, be 
■did not doubt of a full house ; that the poets of the 
theatrical corps bad been trying to accomplish it, but 
bad not succeeded. I told him I would try what I 
could do for him. He came the next afternoon, and 
the song, such as it was, was ready for him. The 
object of the author was to get up an American spirit , 
which should be independent of and above the inter¬ 
ests, passions, and policy of both belligerents, and 
look and feel exclusively for our own honor and 
rights. No allusion is made to France or England, 
or the quarrel between them, or to the question which 
was most in fault in their treatment of us. Of course 
the song found favor with both parties, for both 
were Americans : at least, neither could disavow the 
sentiments and feelings it inculcated. Such is the 
history of this song, which has endured infinitely be¬ 
yond the expectation of the author, as it is beyond 
any merit it can boast of, except that of being truly 
and exclusively patriotic in its sentiments and spirit.” 

AIL, Columbia ! happy land ! 

Hail, ye heroes ! heaven-born band ! 

Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause, 
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause, 
And when the storm of war was gone, 

Enjoy’d the peace your valor won. 

Let independence be our boast, 

Ever mindful what it cost; 

Ever grateful for the prize ; 

Let its altar reach the skies. 

Firm—united—let us be, 

Rallying round our liberty ; 

As a band of brothers join’d, 

Peace and safety we shall find. 

Immortal patriots ! rise once more ; 

Defend your rights, defend your shore; 

Let no rude foe, with impious hand, 

Let no rude foe with impious hand, 

Invade the shrine where sacred lies 
Of toil and blood the well-earn’d prize. 

While offering peace sincere and just, 

In Heaven we place a manly trust, 

That truth and justice will prevail, 

And every scheme of bondage fail. 

Firm—united, etc. 

Sound, sound the trump of Fame ! 

Let Washington’s great name 
Ring through the world with loud applause, 
Ring through the world with loud applause; 

Let every clime to Freedom dear 
Listen with a joyful ear. 

With equal skill and godlike power, 

He governs in the fearful hour 
Of horrid war; or guides, with ease, 

The happier times of honest peace. 

Firm—united, etc. 



Behold the chief who now commands, 
Once more to serve his country stands,— 
The rock on which the storm will beat, 
The rock on which the storm will beat; 
But, arm’d in virtue firm and true, 

His hopes are fix’d on Heaven and you. 
When Hope was sinking in dismay, 

And glooms obscured Columbia’s day, 
His steady mind, from changes free, 
Resolved on death or liberty. 

Firm—united, etc. 


BETTY AND THE BEAR. 

HUMOROUS. 

N a pioneer’s cabin out West, so they say, 
A great big black grizzly trotted one day, 
And seated himself on the hearth, and 
began 

To lap the contents of a two-gallon pan 
Of milk and potatoes,—an excellent meal,— 

And then looked about to see what he could steal. 
The lord of the mansion awoke from his sleep, 

And, hearing a racket, he ventured to peep 
Just out in the kitchen, to see what was there, 

And was scared to behold a great grizzly bear. 

So he screamed in alarm to his slumbering frow, 

“ Thar’s a bar in the kitchen as big’s a cow ! ” 

“A what?” “Why, a bar!” “ Well, murder him, 
then ! ” 

“ Yes, Betty, I will, if you’ll first venture in.” 

So Betty leaped up, and the poker she seized, 

While her man shut the door, and against it he 
squeezed. 

As Betty then laid on the grizzly her blows, 

Now on his forehead, and now on his nose, 

Her man through the key-hole kept shouting within, 
“ Well done, my brave Betty, now hit him agin, 

Now a rap on the ribs, now a knock on the snout, 
Now poke with the poker, and poke his eyes out.” 
So, with rapping and poking, poor Betty alone, 

At last laid Sir Bruin as dead as a stone. 

Now when the old man saw the bear was no more, 
He ventured to poke his nose out of the door. 

And there was the grizzly stretched on the floor. 
Then off to the neighbors he hastened to tell 
All the wonderful things that that morning befell; 
And he published the marvelous story afar, 

How “ me and my Betty jist slaughtered a bar ! 

0 yes, come and see, all the neighbors hev sid it, 
Come see what we did, me and Betty, we did it.” 

Anonymous. 




















MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


503 





BY CLEMENT C. MOORE. 

Born in New York, July 15, 1779; died in Rhode 
Island, July 10, 1863. 

WAS the night before Christmas, when all 
through the house 

Not a creature was stirring, not even a 
mouse; 

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, 
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. 

The children were nestled all snug in their beds 
While visions of sugar-plums danced through their 
heads; 

And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap, 

Had settled our brains for a long winter’s nap, 

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, 


I sprang from the bed to see what 
was the matter. 

Away to the window I flew like a 
flash, 

Tore open the shutters and threw 
up the sash. 

The moon on the breast of the new- 
fallen snow 

Gave the lustre of mid-day to ob¬ 
jects below; 

When what to my wondering eyes 
should appear 

But a miniature sleigh and eight 
tiny reindeer, 

With a little old driver, so lively and quick, 

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. 

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, 

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by 
name: 

“ Now, Dasher ! now, Dancer ! now, Prancer ! and 
Vixen ! 

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen ! 

To the top of the porch ! to the top of the wall! 

Now dash away ! dash away! dash away all! ” 


As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, 
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, 
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, 

With a sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too. 

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof 
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. 

As I drew in my head, and was turning around, 
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. 
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, 
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and 
soot; 

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, 

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. 
His eyes, how they twinkled! his dimples, how 
merry ! 

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! 

































































504 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 



His droll little mouth was drawn up 
like a bow, 

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow; 
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, 

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath. 
He had a broad face, and a little round belly 
That shook, when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. 
He was chubby and plump—a right jolly old elf— 
And I laughed, when I saw him, in spite of myself; 
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head, 

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread ; 

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, 
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, 
And laying his finger aside of his nose, 

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. 

He sprang to the sleigh, to the team gave a whistle, 
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle, 


But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, 
“ Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night! ” 
























MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


505 


WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE. 

BY GEORGE P. MORRIS. 

Born in Pennsylvania in 1802 ; died in 1864. 

OODMAN, spare that tree ! 

Touch not a single bough ! 

In youth it sheltered me, 

And I'll protect it now. 

’Twas my forefather’s hand 
That placed it near his cot; 

There, woodman, let it stand, 

Thy axe shall harm it not! 



That old familiar tree, 

Whose glory and renown 
Are spread o’er land and sea, 

And wouldst thou hew it down ? 
Woodman, forbear thy stroke ! 

Cut not its earth-bound ties; 

O, spare that aged oak. 

Now towering to the skies! 

O 


When but an idle boy 

I sought its grateful shade ; 

In all their gushing joy 
Here too my sisters played. 
My mother kissed me here ; 

My father pressed my hand— 
Forgive this foolish tear, 

But let that old oak stand ! 


My heart-strings round thee cling, 
Close as thy bark, old friend! 
Here shall the wild-bird sing, 

And still thy branches bend. 
Old tree ! the storm still brave ! 

And, woodman, leave the spot; 
While I’ve a hand to save, 

Thy axe shall hurt it not. 


character of the virtue. It soars higher for its object. 
It is an extended self-love, mingling with all the en- 
joyments of life, and twisting itself with the minutest 
filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws 
of society because they are the laws of virtue. In 
their authority we see, not the array of force and 
terror, but the venerable image of our country’s 
honor. Every good citizen makes that honor hi> 
own, and cherishes it, not only as precious, but as 
sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defence, 
and is conscious that he gains protection while he 
gives it. 

What rights of a citizen will be deemed inviolable, 
when a State renounces the principles that constitute 
their security? Or, if his life should not be invaded, 
what would its enjoyments be, in a country odious in 
the eye of strangers, and dishonored in his own? 
Could he look with affection and veneration to such 
a country, as his parent? The sense of having one 
would die within him; he would blush for his pa¬ 
triotism, if he retained any,—and justly, for it would 
be a vice. He would be a banished man in his na¬ 
tive land. 

I see no exception to the respect that is paid 
among nations to the law of good faith. It is the 
philosophy of politics, the religion of governments. 
It is observed by barbarians. A whiff of tobacco 
smoke or a string of beads gives not merely binding 
force, but sanctity, to treaties. Even in Algiers, a 
truce may be bought for money; but when ratified, 
even Algiers is too wise, or too just, to disown and 
annul its obligation. 

- * 0 * - 


-K>«- 

SANCTITY OF TREATIES, 1796. 

BY FISHER AMES. 

An American Statesman and writer; born in Dedham, 
Massachusetts, 1758, and died July 4, 1808. 

E are either to execute this treaty or break 
our faith. To expatiate on the value of 
public faith may pass with some men for 
declamation: to such men I have nothing to say. 

What is patriotism ? Is it a narrow affection for a 
spot where a man was born ? Are the very clods 
where we tread entitled to this ardent preference, be¬ 
cause they are greener? No, sir; this is not the 



THE BLOOM WAS ON THE ALDER AND 
THE TASSEL ON THE CORN. 

BY DONN PTATT. 

Born in Ohio in 1819. 

HEARD the bob-white whistle in the dewy 
breath of morn; 

The bloom was on the alder and the tas¬ 
sel on the corn. 

I stood with beating heart beside the babbling Mac- 
o-chee, 

To see my love come down the glen to keep her tryst 
with me. 

I saw her pace, with quiet grace, the shaded path 
along, 


























50G 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


And pause to pluck a flower or hear the thrush’s song. 

Denied by her proud father as a suitor to be seen. 

She came to me, with loving trust, my gracious little 
queen. 

Above my station, heaven knows, that gentle maiden 
shone, 

For she was belle and wide beloved, and I a youth 
unknown. 

The rich and great about her thronged, and sought 
on bended knee 

For love this gracious princess gave, with all her 
heart, to me. 

So like a startled fawn before my longing eyes she 
stood, 

With all the freshness of a girl in flush of woman¬ 
hood. 

I trembled as I put my arm about her form divine, 

And stammered, as in awkward speech, I begged her 
to be mine. 

’Tis sweet to hear the pattering rain, that lulls a dim- 
lit dream— 

’Tis sweet to hear the song of birds, and sweet the 
rippling stream; 

’Tis sweet amid the mountain pines to hear the south 
winds sigh, 

More sweet than these and all beside was the loving, 
low reply. 

The little hand I held in mine held all I had of life, 

To mould its better destiny and soothe to sleep its strife. 

’Tis said that angels watch o’er men, commissioned 
from above ; 

My angel walked with me on earth, and gave to me 
her love. 

Ah! dearest wife, my heart is stirred, my eyes are 
dim with tears— 

I think upon the loving faith of all these bygone 
years, 

For now we stand upon this spot, as in that dewy 
morn, 

With the bloom upon the alder and the tassel on the 
corn. 

— - •<>♦ - 

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

BY J. Q. ADAMS. 

John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the 

United States, was born at Quincy, Massachusetts, 

July 11, 1767. He died at Washington in 1848. 

HE Declaration of Independence ! The in¬ 
terest which, in that paper, has survived 
the occasion upon which it was issued,— 


the interest which is of every age and every clime,— 
the interest which quickens with the lapse of years, 
spreads as it grows old, and brightens as it recedes,— 
is in the principles which it proclaims. It was the 
first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legiti¬ 
mate foundation of civil government. It was the 
corner-stone of a new fabric, destined to cover the 
surface of the globe. It demolished, at a stroke, the 
lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. 
It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated cen¬ 
turies of servitude. It announced, in practical form 
to the world, the transcendent truth of the inalien¬ 
able sovereignty of the people. It proved that the 
social compact was no figment of the imagination, 
but a real, solid, and sacred bond of the social union. 

From the day of this declaration, the people of 
North America were no longer the fragment of a 
distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an 
inexorable master, in another hemisphere. They 
were no longer children, appealing in vain to the 
sympathies of a heartless mother ; no longer subjects, 
leaning upon the shattered columns of royal prom¬ 
ises, and invoking the faith of parchment to secure 
their rights. They were a nation, asserting as of 
right, and maintained by war, its own existence. A 
nation was born in a day. 

“ How many ages hence 

Shall this, their lofty scene, be acted o’er, 

In States unborn, and accents yet unknown ? ” 

It will be acted o’er, fellow-citizens, but it can never 
be repeated. 

It stands, and must forever stand, alone ; a beacon on 
the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabi¬ 
tants of the earth may turn their eyes, for a genial 
and saving light, till time shall be lost in eternity and 
this globe itself dissolve, nor leave a wreck behind. 
It stands forever, a light of admonition to the 
rulers of men, a light of salvation and redemption 
to the oppressed. So long as this planet shall be 
inhabited by human beings, so long as man shall 
be of a social nature, so long as government shall be 
necessary to the great moral purposes of society, so 
long as it shall be abused to the purposes of op¬ 
pression,—so long shall this declaration hold out, to 
the sovereign and to the subject, the extent and the 
boundaries of their respective rights and duties, 
founded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God. 












MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


507 


WASHINGTON’S ADDRESS TO HIS SOL¬ 
DIERS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF 
LONG ISLAND, 1776. 


THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT AND 
THE STATES. 

BY ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 


BY GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

Born 1732 ; died 1799. 

IIE time is now near at hand which must 
probably determine whether Americans 
are to be freemen or slaves; whether they 
are to have any property they can call their own ; 
whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged 
and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of 
wretchedness from which no human efforts will de¬ 
liver them. The fate of unborn millions will now 
depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of 
this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves 
us only the choice of a brave resistance, or the most 
abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to 
conquer or to die. 

Our own, our country’s honor, calls upon us for a 
vigorous and manly exertion ; and if we now shame¬ 
fully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole 
world. Let us, then, rely on the goodness of our 
cause, and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose 
hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great 
and noble actions. The eyes of all our countrymen 
are now upon us; and we shall have their blessings 
and praises, if happily we are the instruments of sav¬ 
ing them from the tyranny meditated against them. 
Let us, therefore, animate and encourage each other, 
and show the whole world that a freeman contending 
for liberty on his own ground is superior to any slav¬ 
ish mercenary on earth. 

Liberty, property, life, and honor are all at stake. 
Upon your courage and conduct rest the hopes of 
our bleeding and insulted country. Our wives, chil¬ 
dren and parents, expect safety from us only; and 
they have every reason to believe that Heaven will 
crown with success so just a cause. The enemy will 
endeavor to intimidate by show and appearance ; but 
remember they have been repulsed on various occa¬ 
sions by a few brave Americans. Their cause is bad, 
—their men are conscious of it; and, if opposed with 
firmness and coolness on their first onset, with our 
advantage of works, and knowledge of the ground, 
the victory is most assuredly ours. Every good 
soldier will be silent and attentive, wait for orders, 
and reserve his fire until he is sure of doing execution. 




Born in Nevis, one of the West India Islands, in 
1757 ; was killed by Aaron Burr, in a duel, in 1804. 

This speech was delivered in the New York Con¬ 
vention, on the adoption of the Constitution, 1788. 

^R. CHAIRMAN, it has been advanced as a 
principle, that no government but a des¬ 
potism can exist in a very extensive coun¬ 
try. This is a melancholy consideration, indeed. If 
it were founded on truth, we ought to dismiss the 
idea of a republican government, even for the State 
of New York. But the position has been misappre¬ 
hended. Its application relates only to democracies, 
where the body of the people meet to transact busi¬ 
ness, and where representation is unknown. The 
application is wrong in respect to all representative 
governments, but especially in relation to a Con¬ 
federacy of States, in which the Supreme Legislature 
has only general powers, and the civil and domestic 
concerns of the people are regulated by the laws of 
the several States. I insist that it never can be the 
interest or desire of the national Legislature to destroy 
the State Governments. The blow aimed at the mem¬ 
bers must give a fatal wound to the head, and the 
destruction of the States must be at once a political 
suicide. But imagine, for a moment, that a political 
frenzy should seize the government; suppose they 
should make the attempt. Certainly, sir, it would be 
forever impracticable. This has been sufficiently 
demonstrated by reason and experience. It has been 
proved that the members of republics have been, and 
ever will be, stronger than the head. Let us attend 
to one general historical example. 

In the ancient feudal governments of Europe, there 
were, in the first place, a monarch ; subordinate to 
him, a body of nobles; and subject to these, the 
vassals, or the whole body of the people. The author¬ 
ity of the kings was limited, and that of the barons 
considerably independent. The histories of the feudal 
wars exhibit little more than a series of successful en¬ 
croachments on the prerogatives of monarchy. 

Here, sir, is one great proof of the superiority 
which the members in limited governments possess 
over their head. As long as the barons enjoyed the 
confidence and attachment of the people, they had 
the strength of the country on their side, and were 










508 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


irresistible. I may be told in some instances the 
barons were overcome; but liow did this happen ? 
Sir, they took advantage of the depression of the 
royal authority, and the establishment of their own 
power, to oppress and tyrannize over their vassals. 
As commerce enlarged, and wealth and civilization 
increased, the people began to feel their own weight 
and consequence; they grew tired of their oppres¬ 
sions ; united their strength with that of their prince, 
and threw off the yoke of aristocracy. 

These very instances prove what I contend for. 
They prove that in whatever direction the popular 
weight leans, the current of power will flow ; what¬ 
ever the popular attachments be, there will rest the 
political superiority. Sir, can it be supposed that 
the State Governments will become the oppressors of 
the people ? Will they forfeit their affections ? Will 
they combine to destroy the liberties and happiness 
of their fellow-citizens, for the sole purpose of involv¬ 
ing themselves in ruin ? God forbid ! The idea, sir, is 
shocking ! It outrages every feeling of humanity and 
every dictate of common sense ! 

-K>«- 


WHAT SAVED THE UNION. 

BY GENERAL U. S. GRANT. 

Born 1822 ; died 1885. 

From a speech delivered on the Fourth of July at 
Hamburg. 

SHARE with you in all the pleasure and 
gratitude which Americans so far away 
should feel on this anniversary. But I 
must dissent from one remark of our consul, to the 
effect that I saved the country during the recent war. 
If our country could be saved or ruined by the 
efforts of any one man, we should not have a country, 
and we should not now be celebrating our Fourth of 
July. There are many men who would have done 
far better than I did, under the circumstances in 
which I found myself during the war. If I had 
never held command, if I had fallen, if all our gen¬ 
erals had fallen, there were ten thousand behind us 
who would have done our work just as well, who 
would have followed the contest to the end, and 
never surrendered the Union. Therefore, it is a 
mistake and a reflection upon the people to attribute 
to me, or to any number of us who hold high com¬ 



mands, the salvation of the Union. We did our 
work as well as we could, so did hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of others. We demand no credit for it, for we 
should have been unworthy of our country and of 
the American name if we had not made every sacri¬ 
fice to save the Union. What saved the Union w T as 
the coming forward of the young men of the nation. 
They came from their homes and fields, as they did 
in the time of the Revolution, giving everything to 
the country. To their devotion w r e owe the salvation 
of the Union. The humblest soldier w 7 ho carried a 
musket is entitled to as much credit for the results 
of the war as those w T ho were in command. So long 
as our young men are animated by this spirit there 
will be no fear for the Union. 




THE BIRTHDAY OF WASHINGTON. 


BY RUFUS CHOATE. 


Born 1799 ; died 1858. 



HE birthday of the “ Father of his Coun¬ 
try ! ” May it ever be freshly remem¬ 
bered by American hearts ! May it ever 
reawaken in them filial veneration for his memory; 
ever rekindle the fires of patriotic regard to the 
country he loved so well; to which he gave his youth¬ 
ful vigor and his youthful energy, during the perilous 
period of the early Indian warfare; to which he de¬ 
voted his life, in the maturity of his powers, in the 
field; to which again he offered the counsels of his 
wisdom and his experience, as President of the Con¬ 
vention that framed our Constitution ; which he 
guided and directed while in the Chair of State, and 
for which the last prayer of his earthly supplication 
was offered up, when it came the moment for him so 
well, and so grandly, and so calmly, to die. He was 
the first man of the time in which he grew. His 
memory is first and most sacred in our love; and ever 
hereafter, till the last drop of blood shall freeze in the 
last American heart, his name shall be a spell of 
power and might. 

Yes, gentlemen, there is one personal, one vast 
felicity, which no man can share with him. It was 
the daily beauty and towering and matchless glory 
of his life, which enabled him to create his country, 
and, at the same time, secure an undying love and 



















MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


509 


regard from the whole American people. “ The first 
in the hearts of his countrymen ! ” Yes, first! He 
has our first and most fervent love. Undoubtedly 
there were brave and wise and good men, before his 
day, in every colony. But the American nation, as 
a nation, I do not reckon to have begun before 1774. 
And the first love of that young America was Wash¬ 
ington. The first word she lisped was his name. Her 
earliest breath spoke it. It still is her proud ejacula¬ 
tion ; and it will be the last gasp of her expiring life ! 

Yes, others of our great men have been appre¬ 
ciated,—many admired by all. But him we love. 
Him we all love. About and around him we call 
up no dissentient and discordant and dissatisfied ele¬ 
ments,—no sectional prejudice nor bias,—no party, 
no creed, no dogma of politics. None of these shall 
assail him. Yes, when the storm of battle blows 
darkest and rages highest, the memory of Washington 
shall nerve every American arm and cheer every 
American heart. It shall relume that promethean 
fire, that sublime flame of patriotism, that devoted 
love of country, which his words have commended, 
which his example has consecrated. Well did Lord 
Byron write: 

“ Where may the wearied eye repose, 

When gazing on the great, 

Where neither guilty glory glows, 

Nor despicable state ?— 

Yes—one—the first, the last, the best, 

The Cincinnatus of the West, 

Whom envy dared not hate, 

Bequeathed the name of Washington, 

To make man blush, there was "but one.” 

- ♦< > • ■ ■ 

OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF 
MORTAL BE PROUD? 

BY WILLIAM KNOX. 

A favorite poem with Abraham Lincoln, who often 
repeated it to his friends. 

B H ! why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 

Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying 

A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, 
Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave. 

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, 

Be scattered around, and together be laid; 

And the young and the old, and the low and the high, 
Shall rnolder to dust, and together shall lie. 


The infant a mother attended and loved; 

The mother that infant’s affection who proved; 
r Ihe husband that mother and infant who blessed,— 
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest. 

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose 
eye, 

Shone beauty and pleasure,—her triumphs are by; 
And the memory of those who loved her and praised 
Are alike from the minds of the living erased. 

I he hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne ; 
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn; 

The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave, 

Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave. 

The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap; 

The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the 
steep; 

The beggar who wandered in search of his bread, 
Have faded away like the grass that we tread. 

The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven ; 

The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven ; 

The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, 

Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust. 

So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed 
That withers away to let others succeed ; 

So the multitude comes, even those we behold, 

To repeat every tale that has often been told. 

For we are the same our fathers have been ; 

We see the same sights our fathers have seen ; 

We drink the same stream, and view the same sun, 
And run the same course our fathers have run. 

The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would 
think ; 

From the death we are shrinking our fathers would 
shrink ; 

To the life we are clinging they also would cling; 

But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing. 

They loved, but the story we cannot unfold ; 

They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; 
They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will 

come; 

They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is 
dumb. 

They died, aye ! they died ; and we things that are 
now, 

Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow, 

Who make in their dwelling a transient abode, 

Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage 
road. 









510 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, 

We mingle together in sunshine and rain ; 

And the smiles and the tears, the song and the dirge, 
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge. 

’Tis the wink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath, 
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, 
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,— 
Oh ! why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 


COLUMBUS IN CHAINS. 


THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD. 

BY THEODORE O’HARA. 

Born in Danville, Kentucky, 1820; died in Alabama, 
1867. This famous poem was written in honor of 
a comrade of the author, a Kentucky soldier, who 
fell mortally wounded in the battle of Buena Vista. 

HE muffled drum's sad roll has beat 
The soldier’s last tattoo; 

No more on life's parade shall meet 
The brave and fallen few. 

On fame’s eternal camping-ground 
Their silent tents are spread, 

And glory guards with solemn round 
The bivouac of the dead. 



BY MISS JEWSBURY. 

ND this, 0 Spain ! is thy return 

I ffllSLv* For new wor ^ I gave ! 

Chains !—this the recompense I earn ! 
The fetters of the slave ! 

Yon sun that sinketh ’neath the sea, 

Rises on realms I found for thee. 

I served thee as a son would serve ; 

I loved thee with a father’s love; 

It ruled my thought, and strung my nerve, 

To raise thee other lands above, 

That thou, with all thy wealth, might be 
The single empress of the sea. 

For thee my form is bowed and worn 
With midnight watches on the main; 

For thee my soul hath calmly borne 
Ills worse than sorrow, more than pain; 
Through life, what’er my lot might be, 

I lived, dared, suffered, but for thee. 

My guerdon !—’Tis a furrowed brow, 

Hair gray with grief, eyes dim with tears, 
And blighted hope, and broken vow, 

And poverty for coming years, 

And hate, with malice in her train :— 

What other guerdon ?—View my chain ! 

Yet say not that I weep for gold ! 

No, let it be the robber’s spoil.— 

Nor yet, that hate and malice bold 
Decry my triumph and my toil.— 

I weep but for Spain’s lasting shame; 

I weep but for her blackened fame. 


No rumor of the foe’s advance 
Now swells upon the wind, 

No troubled thought at midnight haunts 
Of loved ones left behind; 

No vision of the morrow’s strife 
The warrior’s dream alarms, 

No braying horn or screaming fife 
At dawn shall call to arms. 

Their shivered swords are red with rust, 
Their plumed heads are bowed, 

Their haughty banner trailed in dust 
Is now their martial shroud— 

And plenteous funeral tears have washed 
The red stains from each brow, 

And the proud forms by battle gashed 
Are free from anguish now. 

The neighboring troop, the flashing blade* 
The bugle’s stirring blast, 

The charge, the dreadful cannonade, 

The din and shout are passed— 

Nor war’s wild note, nor glory’s peal, 

Shall thrill with fierce delight 
Those breasts that never more may feel 
The rapture of the fight. 

Like the fierce northern hurricane 
That sweeps his great plateau, 

Flushed with the triumph yet to gain 
Came down the serried foe— 

Who heard the thunder of the fray 
Break o’er the field beneath, 

Knew well the watchword of that day 
Was victory or death. 


No more.—The sunlight leaves the sea; 

Farewell, thou never-dying king! 

Earth’s clouds and changes change not thee, 
And thou—and thou,—grim, giant thing, 
Cause of my glory and my pain,— 

Farewell, unfathomable main ! 


Full many a mother’s breath hath swept 
O’er Angostura’s plain, 

And long the pitying sky has wept 
Above its moldered slain. 

The raven’s scream, or eagle’s flight, 

Or shepherd’s pensive lay, 



















MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


511 


Alone now wake each solemn height 
That frowned o’er that dread fray. 

Sons of the dark and bloody ground, 

Ye must not slumber there, 

Where stranger steps and tongues resound 
Along the heedless air ! 

Your own proud land’s heroic soil 
Shall be your fitter grave ; 

She claims from war its richest spoil— 
The ashes of her brave. 

Thus ’neath their parent turf they rest, 
Far from the gory field, 

Borne to a Spartan mother’s breast 
On many a bloody shield. 

The sunshine of their native sky 
Shines sadly on them here, 

And kindred eyes and hearts watch by 
The heroes’ sepulchre. 

Best on, embalmed and sainted dead! 

Dear as the blood ye gave ; 

No impious footstep here shall tread 
The herbage of your grave! 

Nor shall your glory be forgot 
While fame her record keeps, 

Or honor points the hallowed spot 
Where valor proudly sleeps. 


so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a 
great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedi¬ 
cate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those 
who here gave their lives that that nation might 
live. 

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should 
do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we 
cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. 
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, 
have consecrated it far above our power to add or 
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember 
what we say here, but it can never forget what they 
| did here. 

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here 
to the unfinished work they have thus far so nobly 
carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
to the great task remaining before us, that from these 
honored dead we take increased devotion to the 
cause for which they gave the last full measure of 
devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead 
shall not have died in vain, and that the nation shall, 
under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that 
the government of the people, by the people, and for 
the people shall not perish from the earth. 


Yon marble minstrel’s voiceless stone 
In deathless song shall tell, 

When many a vanished year hath flown, 
The story how ye fell; 

Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter’s blight, 
Nor time’s remorseless doom, 

Can dim one ray of holy light 
That gilds your glorious tomb. 


O 


ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF 
GETTYSBURG CEMETERY. 


BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Born 1809 ; died 1865. Mr. Lincoln always spoke 
briefly and to the point. The following short oration, 
delivered at the dedication of the Gettysburg Ceme¬ 
tery, is universally regarded as one of the greatest 
masterpieces, of brief and simple eloquence, in the 
realm of oratory. 



OURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth upon this continent a new 
nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated 
to the proposition that all men are created equal. 
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and 




MEMORY. 

BY JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Born 1831 ; died 1881. The following poem was 
writen by the late President Garfield during his senior 
year in Williams College, Massachusetts, and was 
published in the Williams “Quarterly” for March, 
1856. 

IS beauteous night; the stars look brightly 
down 

Upon the earth, decked in her robe of 
snow. 

No lights gleam at the windows, save my own, 

Which gives its cheer to midnight and to me. 

And now with noiseless step, sweet memory comes 
And leads me gently through her twilight realms. 
What poet’s tuneful lyre has ever sung, 

Or delicatest pencil e’er portrayed 
The enchanted, shadowy land where memory dwells; 
It has its valleys, cheerless, lone, and drear, 
Dark-shaded by the mournful cypress tree; 

And yet its sunlit mountain-tops are bathed 
In heaven’s own blue. Upon its craggy cliffs, 

Robed in the dreamy light of distant years, 

Are clustered joys serene of other days. 

Upon its gently sloping hillsides bend 


















512 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


The weeping willows o’er the sacred dust 
Of dear departed ones; yet in that land, 

Where’er our footsteps fall upon the shore, 

They that were sleeping rise from out the dust 
Of death’s long, silent } T ears, and round us stand 
As erst they did before the prison tomb 
Received their clay within its voiceless halls. 

The heavens that bend above that land are hung 
With clouds of various hues. Some dark and chill, 
Surcharged with sorrow, cast their sombre shade 
Upon the sunny, joyous land below. 

Others are floating through the dreamy air, 

White as the falling snow, their margins tinged 
With gold and crimson hues; their shadows fall 
Upon the flowery meads and sunny slopes, 

Soft as the shadow of an angel's wing. 

When the rough battle of the day is done, 

And evening’s peace falls gently on the heart, 

I bound away, across the noisy years, 

Unto the utmost verge of memory’s land, 

Where earth and sky in dreamy distance meet, 

And memory dim with dark oblivion joins ; 

Where woke the first remembered sounds that fell 
Upon the ear in childhood’s early morn; 

And, wandering thence along the rolling years, 

I see the shadow of my former self 
Gliding from childhood up to man’s estate ; 

The path of youth winds down through many a vale, 
And on the brink of many a dread abyss, 

From out whose darkness comes no ray of light, 

Save that a phantom dances o’er the gulf 
And beckons toward ■the verge. Again the path 
Leads o’er the summit where the sunbeams fall; 

And thus in light and shade, sunshine and gloom, 
Sorrow and joy this life-path leads along. 


o«- 


ALL QUIET ALONG THE POTOMAC. 

BY ETHELINDA ELLIOTT BEERS. 

Born in New York, 1827 ; died in New Jersey, 1879. 

The following poem first appeared in “Harper’s 
Weekly” in 1861. and being published anonymously 
its authorship was, says Mr. Steelman, “falsely 
claimed by several persons.” 

LL quiet along the Potomac, they say, 

“ Except now and then a stray picket 
J Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro, 
By a rifleman hid in the thicket. 

’Tis nothing; a private or two, now and then, 

Will not count in the news of the battle; 

Not an officer lost—only one of the men, 

Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle.” 

All quiet along the Potomac to-night, 

Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming; 



Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon, 

Or the light of the watchfires, are gleaming. 

A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night-wind 
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping; 

While stars up above, with their glittering eyes, 
Keep guard—for the army is sleeping. 

There’s only the sound of the lone sentry’s tread 
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain, 

And he thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed, 

Far away in the cot on the mountain. 

His musket falls slack ; his face, dark and grim, 
Grows gentle with memories tender, 

As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep, 

For their mother—may Heaven defend her ! 

The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then, 
That night when the love yet unspoken 

Leaped up to his lips—when low, murmured vows 
Were pledged to be ever unbroken; 

Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his ej'es, 

He dashes off tears that are welling, 

And gathers his gun closer up to its place, 

As if to keep down the heart-swelling. 

He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree— 

The footstep is lagging and weary; 

Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light, 
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary. 

Hark ! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves? 
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing ? 

It looked like a rifle : “ Ha ! Mary, good-by ! ” 

And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing. 

All quiet along the Potomac to-night— 

No sound save the rush of the river; 

While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead— 
The picket’s off duty forever. 


A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE. 

BY EPES SARGENT. 

Born 1813 ; died 1880. The following beautiful 
and popular song, sung all over the world, like 
“ Home, Sweet Home,” is by an American author. It 
is one of those bits of lyric verse which will perpetu¬ 
ate the name of its w T riter longer, perhaps, then any 
of the many books which he gave to the world. 

LIFE on the ocean wave, 

A home on the rolling deep ; 

Where the scattered waters rave, 

And the winds their revels keep ! 

Like an angel caged I pine, 

On this dull, unchanging shore : 

0, give me the flashing brine, 

The spray and the tempest’s roar! 




















MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


513 


Once more on the deck I stand, 

Of my own swift-gliding craft: 

Set sail! farewell to the land ; 

The gale follows fair abaft. 

We shoot through the sparkling foam, 

Like an ocean-bird set free,— 

Like the ocean-bird, our home 
We 11 find far out on the sea. 

The land is no longer in view, 

The clouds have begun to frown ; 

But with a stout vessel and crew, 

We 11 say, “ Let the storm come down ! ” 

And the song of our hearts shall be, 

While the winds and the waters rave, 

A home on the rollins; sea ! 

A life on the ocean wave! 

-K>« 

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. 

BY F. M. FINCH. 

Born in Ithaca, N. Y., 1827. 

Many of the women of the South, animated by 
noble sentiments, have shown themselves impartial 
in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. 
They have strewn flowers alike on the graves of the 
Confederate and of the National soldiers. 

Y the flow of the inland river, 

Whence the fleets of iron have fled, 
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver, 
Asleep on the ranks of the dead: 

Under the sod and the dew, 

Waiting the judgment day ; 

Under the one, the Blue, 

Under the other, the Gray. 


With a touch impartially tender, 

On the blossoms blooming for all:— 
Under the sod and the dew, 

Waiting the judgment day ; 
Broidered with gold, the Blue, 
Mellowed with gold, the Gray. 

So, when the summer calleth, 

On forest and field of grain 

With an equal murmur falleth 
The cooling drip of the rain :— 

Under the sod and the dew, 

Waiting the judgment day ; 

Wet with the rain, the Blue, 

Wet with the rain, the Gray. 

Sadly, but not with upbraiding, 

The generous deed was done; 

In the storm of the years that are fading, 
No braver battle was won :— 

Under the sod and the dew, 

Waiting the judgment day ; 

Under the blossoms, the Blue, 

Under the garlands, the Gray. 

No more shall the war-cry sever, 

Or the winding lLers be red; 

They banish our anger forever 

When they laurel the graves of our dead! 
Under the sod and the dew, 

Waiting the judgment day ; 

Love and tears for the Blue. 

Tears and love for the Gray. 


ROLL-CALL. 



These in the robings of glory, 

Those in the gloom of defeat, 

All with the battle-blood gory, 

In the dusk of eternity meet:— 
Under the sod and the dew, 
Waiting the judgment day ; 
Under the laurel, the Blue, 
Under the willow, the Gray. 

From the silence of sorrowful hours, 
The desolate mourners go, 

Lovingly laden with flowers, 

Alike for the friend and the foe:— 
Under the sod and the dew, 
Waiting the judgment day ; 
Under the roses, the Blue, 

Under the lilies, the Gray. 


BY NATHANIEL P. SHEPHERD. 

Born in New York, 1835; died 1869. 

ORPORAL GREEN! ” the orderly cried; 

“ Here ! ” was the answer, loud and clear, 
From the lips of the soldier who stood 
near— 

And “ here ! ” was the word the next replied. 



“ Cyrus Drew ! ’’—then a silence fell— 
This time no answer followed the call; 
Only his rear-man had seen him fall, 
Killed or wounded, he could not tell. 


There they stood in the failing light, 

These men of battle, with grave, dark looks, 
As plain to be read as open books, 

While slowly gathered the shades of night. 


So, with an equal splendor, 
The morning sun-rays fall, 

33 


The fern on the hillsides was splashed with blood, 
And down in the corn where the poppies grew 
















514 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


Were redder stains than the poppies knew; 

And crimson-dyed was the river’s flood. 

For the foe had crossed from the other side 
That day, in the face of a murderous fire 
That swept them down in its terrible ire; 

And their life-blood went to color the tide. 

“ Herbert Kline ! ” At the call there came 
Two stalwart soldiers into the line 
Bearing between them this Herbert Kline, 
Wounded and bleeding, to answer his name. 

“ Ezra Kerr ! ” and a voice answered, “ here ! ” 

“ Hiram Kerr ! ”—but no man replied. 

They were brothers, these two; the sad winds 
sighed, 

And a shudder crept through the cornfield near. 

“ Ephraim Deane ! ”—then a soldier spoke : 

“ Deane carried our regiment’s colors,” he said; 

“ Where our ensign was shot, I left him dead, 

Just after the enemy wavered and broke. 

“ Close to the roadside his body lies; 

I paused a moment and gave him drink ; 

He murmured his mother’s name, I think, 

And death came with it and closed his eyes.” 

’Twas a victory; yes, but it cost us dear— 

For that company’s roll, when called at night, 

Of a hundred men who went into the fight, 
Numbered but twenty that answered, “ Here! ” 

-K>«- 

THEOLOGY IN THE QUARTERS. 

BY J. A. MACON. 

Born in Alabama, 1851. 

Author of “ Uncle Gab Tucker .” 

The following dialect verses are a faithful repro¬ 
duction, not only of the negro dialect of the cotton 
sections of the South ; but the genius of Mr. Macon 
has subtly embodied in this and other of his writings 
a shadowy but true picture of the peculiar and orig¬ 
inal philosophy and humor of the poor but happy 
black people of the section with which he is so fa¬ 
miliar. 

OW, I’s got a notion in my head dat when 
you come to die, 

An’ stan’ de ’zamination in de Cote-house 
in de sky, 

You’ll be ’stonished at de questions dat de angel’s 
gwine to ax 

When he gits you on de witness-stan’ an’ pin you to 
de fac’s; 


’Cause he’ll ax you mighty closely ’bout your doin’s 
in de night, 

An’ de water-milion question’s gwine to bodder you a 
sight! 

Den your eyes’ll open wider dan dey ehber done befo’ 

When he chats you ’bout a chicken-scrape dat hap¬ 
pened long ago! 

De angels on the picket-line erlong de Milky Way 

Keep a-watchin’ what you’re dribin’ at, an’ hearin’ 
what you say; 

No matter what you want to do, no matter whar 
you’s gwine, 

Dey’s mighty ap’ to find it out an’ pass it ’long de 
line; 

An’ of ’en at de nleetin’, when you make a fuss an’ 
laugh, 

Why, dey send de news a-kitin’ by de golden tele¬ 
graph ; 

Den, de angel in de orfis, what’s a settin’ by de gate, 

Jes’ reads de message wid a look an’ claps it on de 
slate! 

Den you better do your juty well an’ keep your con¬ 
science clear. 

An’ keep a-lookin' straight ahead an’ watcliin’ whar 
you steer; 

’Cause arter while de time’ll come to journey fum de 
lan’, 

An’ dey’ll take you way up in de a’r an’ put you on 
de stan’; 

Den you’ll hab to listen to de clerk an’ answer mighty 
straight, 

Ef you ebber ’spec’ to trabble froo de alaplaster gate ! 

-- 

BUIN WROUGHT BY RUM. 
(temperance selection.) 

0, feel what I have felt, 

Go, bear what I have borne; 

Sink ’neatli a blow a father dealt, 

And the cold, proud world’s scorn. 

Thus struggle on from year to year, 

Thy sole relief the scalding tear. 

Go, weep as I have wept 
O’er a loved father’s fall; 

See every cherished promise swept, 

Youth’s sweetness turned to gall; 

Hope’s faded flowers strewed all the way 
That led me up to woman’s day. 

Go. kneel as I have knelt; 

Implore, beseech and pray. 

Strive the besotted heart to melt, 

The downward course to stay; 

Be cast with bitter curse aside,— 

Thy prayers burlesqued, thy tears defied. 



















MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


515 



EHOLD this ruin ! ’Twas a skull, 

Once of ethereal spirit full. 

This narrow cell was life’s retreat, 

This space was thought’s mysterious seat. 
What beauteous visions filled this spot, 
What dreams of pleasure long forgot ? 
Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear, 
Have left one trace of record here. 


Go, stand where I have stood, 

And see the strong man bow; 

With gnashing teeth, lips bathed in blood, 
And cold and livid brow; 

Go, catch his wandering glance, and see 
There mirrored his soul's misery. 

Go, hear what I have heard,— 

The sobs of sad despair, 

As memory’s feeling fount hath stirred, 

And its revealings there 
Have told him what he might have been, 

Had he the drunkard’s fate foreseen. 

Go to my mother's side, 

And her crushed spirit cheer; 

Thine own deep anguish hide, 

Wipe from her cheek the tear; 

Mark her dimmed eye, her furrowed brow, 
The gray that streaks her dark hair now, 

The toil-worn frame, the trembling limb, 

And trace the ruin back to him 
Whose plighted faith in early youth, 
Promised eternal love and truth, 

But who, forsworn, hath yielded up 
This promise to the deadly cup, 

And led her down from love and light, 

From all that made her pathway bright, 

And chained her there ’mid want and strife, 
That lowly thing,—a drunkard’s wife ! 

And stamped on childhood’s brow, so mild, 
That withering blight,—a drunkard’s child! 

Go, hear, and see, and feel, and know 
All that my soul hath felt and known, 
Then look within the wine-cup’s glow; 

See if its brightness can atone ; 

Think of its flavor would you try, 

If all proclaimed,— Tis drink and die. 

Tell me I hate the bowl,— 

Hate is a feeble word ; 

I loathe, abhor, my very soul 
By strong disgust is stirred 
Whene’er I see, or hear, or tell 
Of the DARK BEVERAGE OF HELL ! 

Anonymous. 


Beneath this moldering canopy 
Once shone the bright and busy eye ; 

But start not at the dismal void ; 

If social love that eye employed, 

If with no lawless fire it gleamed, 

But through the dews of kindness beamed,— 
That eye shall be forever bright 
When stars and sun are sunk in night. 

Within this hollow cavern hung 

o 

The ready, swift, and tuneful tongue; 

If falsehood's honey it disdained, 

And when it could not praise was chained; 

If bold in virtue’s cause it spoke, 

Yet gentle concord never broke,— 

This silent tongue shall plead for thee 
When time unveils eternity ! 

Say. did these fingers delve the mine, 

Or with the envied rubies shine ? 

To hew the rock or wear a gem 

Can little now avail to them. ' 

But if the page of truth they sought, 

Or comfort to the mourner brought, 

These hands a richer meed shall claim 
Than all that wait on wealth and fame. 

Avails it whether bare or shod 
These feet the paths of duty trod ? 

If from the bowers of ease they fled, 

To seek affliction’s humble shed ; 

If grandeur’s guilty bribe they spurned, 

And home to virtue’s cot returned,— 

These feet with angel wings shall vie, 

And tread the palace of the sky ! 

-K>«- 


O 


TO A SKELETON. 

The MS. of this poem was found in the Museum 
of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, near a 
perfect human skeleton, and sent by the curator to 
the “Morning Chronicle” for publication. It excited 
so much attention that every effort was made to dis¬ 
cover the author, and a responsible party went so far 
as to offer fifty guineas for information that would 
discover its origin. The author preserved his incog¬ 
nito, and, we believe, has never been discovered. 


PLEDGE WITH WINE. 

(a temperance selection.) 

LEDGE with wine—pledge with wine!” 

cried the young and thoughtless Harry 
i Wood. “ Pledge with wine,” ran through 
the brilliant crowd. 

The beautiful bride grew pale—the decisive hour 
had come,—she pressed her white hands together, 



















516 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 




and the leaves of her bridal wreath trembled on her 
pure brow ; her breath came quicker, her heart beat 
wilder. From her childhood she had been most 
solemnly opposed to the use of all wines and liquors. 

11 Yes, Marion, lay aside your scruples for this 
once."’ said the judge in a low tone, going towards 
his daughter, “ the company expect it; do not so 
seriously infringe upon the rules of etiquette;—in 
your own house act as you please; but in mine, for 
this once please me.” 

Every eye was turned towards the bridal pair. 
Marion's principles were well known. Henry had 
been a convivialist, but of late his friends noticed the 
change in his manners, the difference in his habits— 
and to-night they watched him to see, as they sneer- 
ingly said, if he was tied down to a woman’s opinion 
so soon. 

Pouring a brimming beaker, they held it with 
tempting smiles toward Marion. She was very pale, 
though more composed, and her hand shook not, as 
smiling back, she gratefully accepted the crystal 
tempter and raised it to her lips. But scarcely had 
she done so, when every hand was arrested by her 
piercing exclamation of “ Oh. how terrible ! ” “ What 
is it?” cried one and all. thronging together, for she 
had slowly carried the glass at arm's length, and was 
fixedly regarding it as though it were some hideous 
object. 

“ Wait,” she answered, while an inspired light 
shone from her dark eyes, “ wait and I will tell you. 
I see,” she added, slowly pointing one jeweled finger 
at the sparkling ruby liquid, “ a sight that beggars 
all description ; and yet listen ; I will paint it for you 
if I can : It is a lonely spot; tall mountains, crowned 
with verdure, rise in awful sublimity around; a river 
runs through, and bright flowers grow to the water’s 
edge. There is a thick, warm mist that the sun 
seeks vainly to pierce; trees, lofty and beautiful, 
! wave to the airy motion of the birds; but there, a 
group of Indians gather; they flit to and fro with 
something like sorrow upon their dark brows; and in 
their midst lies a manly form, but his cheek, how 
deathly; his eye wild with the fitful fire of fever. 
One friend stands beside him, nay, I should say 
kneels, for he is pillowing that poor head upon his 
breast. 

“ Genius in ruins. Oh! the high, holy-looking 


brow ! Why should death mark it, and he so young? 
Look how he throws the damp curls! see him clasp 
his hands! hear his thrilling shrieks for life! mark 
how he clutches at the form of his companion, im¬ 
ploring to be saved. Oh ! hear him call piteously 
his father’s name; see him twine his fingers together 
as he shrieks for his sister—his only sister—the twin 
of his soul—weeping for him in his distant native 
land. 

“ See! ” she exclaimed, while the bridal party 
shrank back, the untasted wine trembling in their 
faltering grasp, and the judge fell, overpowered, upon 
his seat; “ see! his arms are lifted to heaven ; he 
prays, how wildly, for mercy ! hot fever rushes through 
his veins. The friend beside him is weeping; awe¬ 
stricken, the dark men move silently, and leave the 
living and dying together.” 

There was a hush in that princely parlor, broken 
only by what seemed a smothered sob, from some 
manly bosom. The bride stood yet upright, with 
quivering lip, and tears stealing to the outward edge 
of her lashes. Her beautiful arm had lost its tension, 
and the glass, with its little troubled red waves, 
came slowly towards the range of her vision. She 
spoke again ; every lip was mute. Her voice was 
low, faint, yet awfully distinct: she still fixed her 
sorrowful glance upon the wine-cup. 

“ It is evening now; the great white moon is 
coming up, and her beams lie gently on his forehead. 
He moves not; his eyes are set in their sockets ; dim 
are their piercing glances ; in vain his friend whispers 
the name of father and sister—death is there. Death ! 
and no soft hand, no gentle voice to bless and soothe 
him. His head sinks back ! one convulsive shudder ! 
he is dead ! ” 

A groan ran through the assembly, so vivid was 
her description, so unearthly her look, so inspired her 
manner, that what she described seemed actually to 
have taken place then and there. They noticed also, 
that the bridegroom hid his face in his hands and was 
weeping. 

“ Dead ! ” she repeated again, her lips quivering 
faster and faster, and her voice more and more broken: 
“ and there they scoop him a grave ; and there, with¬ 
out a shroud, they lay him down in the damp, reek¬ 
ing earth. The only son of a proud father, the only 
idolized brother of a fond sister. And he sleeps to- 







MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


517 


day in that distant country, with no stone to mark 
the spot. There he lies—my father’s son—my own 
twin brother! a victim to this deadly poison. 
Father,” she exclaimed, turning suddenly, while the 
tears rained down her beautiful cheeks, “ father, shall 
I drink it now ? ” 

The form of the old judge was convulsed with 
agony. He raised his head, but in a smothered 
voice he faltered—“ No, no, my child; in God’s 
name, no.” 

She lifted the glittering goblet, and letting it sud¬ 
denly fall to the floor it was dashed into a thousand 
pieces. Many a tearful eye watched her movements, 
and instantaneously every wine-glass was transferred 
to the marble table on which it had been prepared. 
Then, as she looked at the fragments of crystal, she 
turned to the company, saying: “ Let no friend, 

hereafter, who loves me, tempt me to peril my soul 
for wine. Not firmer the everlasting hills than my 
resolve, God helping me, never to touch or taste that 
terrible poison. And he to whom I have given my 
hand ; who watched over my brother’s dying form in 
that last solemn hour, and buried the dear wanderer 
there by the river in that land of gold, will, I trust, 
sustain me in that resolve. Will you not, my hus¬ 
band ? ” 

His glistening eyes, his sad, sweet smile was her 
answer. 

The judge left the room, and when an hour later 
he returned, and with a more subdued manner took 
part in the entertainment of the bridal guests, no one 
could fail to read that he, too, had determined to dash 
the enemy at once and forever from his princely 
rooms. 

Those who were present at that wedding can never 
forget the impression so solemnly made. Many from 
that hour forswore the social glass. 


SPARTACUS TO THE GLADIATORS AT 

CAPUA. 

BY ELIJAH KELLOG. 

Born in Portland, Maine. 1813. Spartacus was a 
Thracian soldier, who was taken prisoner by the Ro¬ 
mans, made a slave, and trained as a gladiator. He 
escaped with a number of fellow-gladiators, an inci¬ 
dent to which this speech is supposed to refer to. 
He was killed in battle 71 B. C., while leading the 
Servile War against Rome. 



T had been a day of triumph in Capua. 
Lentulus, returning with victorious eagles, 
had amused the populace with the sports 
of the amphitheatre to an extent hitherto unknown 
even in that luxurious city. The shouts of revelry 
had died away; the roar of the lion had ceased ; the 
last loiterer had retired from the banquet; and the 
lights in the palace of the victor were extinguished. 
The moon, piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, sil¬ 
vered the dewdrops on the corslet of the Roman sen¬ 
tinel, and tipped the dark waters of the Vulturous 
with a wavy, tremulous light. No sound was heard, 
save the last sob of some retiring wave, telling its 
story to the smooth pebbles of the beach ; and then 
all was as still as the breast when the spirit has de¬ 
parted. In the deep recesses of the amphitheatre, a. 
band of gladiators were assembled ; their muscles 
still knotted with the agony of conflict, the foam upon 
their lips, the scowl of battle yet lingering on their 
brows; when Spartacus, arising in the midst of that 
grim assembly, thus addressed them : 

“ Ye call me chief; and ve do well to call him 
chief who, for twelve long years, has met upon the 
arena every shape of man or beast the broad empire 
of Rome could furnish, and who never yet lowered 
his arm. If there be one among you who can say 
that ever, in public fight or private brawl, my actions 
did belie my tongue, let him stand forth and say it. 
If there be three in all your company dare face me 
on the bloody sands, let them come on. And yet I 
was not always thus,—a hired butcher, a savage 
chief of still more savage men ! My ancestors came 
from old Sparta, and settled among the vine-clad 
rocks and citron groves of Syrasella. My early life 
ran quiet as the brooks by which I sported; and 
when, at noon, I gathered the sheep beneath the 
shade, and played upon the shepherd’s flute, there 
was a friend, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the 
pastime. We led our flocks to the same pasture, and 
partook together our rustic meal. One evening, after 
the sheep were folded, and we were all seated be¬ 
neath the myrtle which shaded our cottage, my 
grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and 
Leuctra ; and how, in ancient times, a little band of 
Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, had withstood 
a whole army. I did not then know what war was ; 
but my cheeks burned, I knew not why, and I clasped 









518 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 




the knees of that venerable man, until my mother, 
parting the hair from off my forehead, kissed my 
throbbing temples, and bade me go to rest, and think 
no more of those old tales and savage wars. That 
very night the Romans landed on our coast. I saw 
the breast that had nourished me trampled by the 
hoof of the war-horse ; the bleeding body of my 
father flung amidst the blazing rafters of our dwell¬ 
ing ! 

“ To-day I killed a man in the arena ; and, when I 
broke his helmet-clasps, behold ! he was my friend. 
He knew me, smiled faintly, gasped, and died ;—the 
same sweet smile upon his lips that I had marked, 
when, in adventurous boyhood, we scaled the lofty 
cliff to pluck the first ripe grapes, and bear them 
home in childish triumph. I told the praetor that 
the dead man had been my friend, generous and 
brave ; and I begged that I might bear away the 
body, to burn it on a funeral pile, and mourn over 
its ashes. Ay ! upon my knees, amid the dust and 
blood of the arena, I begged that poor boon, while all 
the assembled maids and matrons, and the holy vir¬ 
gins they call Vestals, and the rabble, shouted in de¬ 
rision, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome’s 
fiercest gladiator turn pale and tremble at sight of 
that piece of bleeding clay ! And the prastor drew 
back as if I were pollution, and sternly said : ‘ Let 
the carrion rot; there are no noble men but Romans !’ 
And so, fellow-gladiators, must you, and so must I, 
die like dogs. 0, Rome! Rome ! thou hast been a 
tender nurse to me. Ay, thou hast given to that 
poor, gentle, timid shepherd lad, who never knew a 
harsher tone than a flute-note, muscles of iron and a 
heart of flint; taught him to drive the sword through 
plaited mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it 
in the marrow of his foe ;—to gaze into the glaring 
eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion, even as a boy 
upon a laughing girl! And he shall pay thee back, 
until the yellow Tiber is red as frothing wine, and in 
its deepest ooze thy life-blood lies curdled ! 

“ Ye stand here now like giants, as ye are ! The 
strength of brass is in your toughened sinews ; but 
to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet per¬ 
fume from his curly locks, shall with his lily fingers 
pat your red brawn, and bet his sesterces upon your 
blood. Hark ! hear ye yon liorl roaring in his den ? 
’Tis three days since he tasted flesh; but to-morrow 


he shall break his fast upon yours—and a dainty meal 
for him ye will be! If ye are beasts , then stand 
here like fat oxen, waiting for the butcher’s knife! 
If ye are men ,—follow me ! Strike down yon guard, 
gain the mountain-passes, and there do bloody work, 
as did your sires at Old ’Thermopylae ! Is Sparta 
dead ? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, 
that you do crouch and cower like a belabored hound 
beneath his master’s lash ? 0 comrades ! warriors ! 

Thracians !—if we must fight, let us fight for our¬ 
selves ! If we must slaughter, let us slaughter our 
oppressors ! If we must die, let it be under the clear 
sky, by the bright waters, in noble, honorable battle !’ : 


THE CRABBED MAN. 

(Extract from a Lecture.) 

BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE. 

Born 1832. One of the most eminent orators of 
the American pulpit. 

F all the ills that flesh is heir to, a cross, 
crabbed, ill-contented man is the most unen¬ 
durable, because the most inexcusable. No 
occasion, no matter how trifling, is permitted to pass 
without eliciting his dissent, his sneer, or his growl. 
His good and patient wife never yet prepared a dinner 
that he liked. One day she prepares a dish that she 
thinks will particularly please him. He comes in the 
front door, and says: “ Whew ! whew! what have 
you got in the house ? Now, my dear, you know that 
I never did like codfish/’ Some evening, resolving to 
be especially gracious, he starts with his family to a 
place of amusement. He scolds the most of the 
way. He cannot afford the time or the money, and 
he does not believe the entertainment will be much, 
after all. The music begins. The audience are 
thrilled. The orchestra, with polished instruments, 
warble and weep, and thunder and pray—all the 
sweet sounds of the world flowering upon the strings 
of the bass viol, and wreathing the flageolets, and 
breathing from the lips of the cornet, and shaking 
their flower-bells upon the tinkling tambourine. 

He sits motionless and disgusted. He goes home 
saying: “ Did you see that fat musician that got so 
red blowing that French horn ? He looked like a 
stuffed toad. Did you ever hear such a voice as 














MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


519 


that lady has ? Why, it was a perfect squawk ! The 
evening was wasted.” And his companion says : 
“ Why, my dear ! ” “ There, you needn’t tell me— 
you are pleased with everything. But never ask me 
to go again ! ” He goes to church. Perhaps the 
sermon is didactic and argumentative. He yawns. 
He gapes. He twists himself in his pew, and pre¬ 
tends he is asleep, and says: “ I could not keep 

awake. Did you ever hear anything so dead? Can 
these dry bones live ? ” Next Sabbath he enters a 
church where the minister is much given to illustra¬ 
tion. Pie is still more displeased. He says : “ How 
dare that man bring such every-day things into his 
pulpit ? He ought to have brought his illustrations 
from the cedar of Lebanon and the fir-tree, instead 
of the hickory and sassafrass. He ought to have 
spoken of the Euphrates and the Jordan, and not of 
the Kennebec and Schuylkill. He ought to have 
mentioned Mount Gerizim instead of the Catskills. 
Why, he ought to be disciplined. Why, it is 
ridiculous.” Perhaps afterward he joins the church. 
Then the church will have its hands full. He growls 
and groans and whines all the way up toward the 
gate of heaven. He wishes that the choir would 
sing differently, that the minister would preach 
differently, that the elders would pray differently. In 
the morning, he said, “ The church was as cold as 
Greenland ; ” in the evening, “ It was hot as blazes.” 
They painted the church ; he didn’t like the color. 
They carpeted the aisles ; he didn’t like the figure. 
They put in a new furnace; he didn’t like the 
patent. He wriggles and squirms, and frets and 
stews, and worries himself. He is like a horse, that, 
prancing and uneasy to the bit, worries himself into 
a lather of foam, while the horse hitched beside him 
just pulls straight ahead, makes no fuss, and comes 
to his oats in peace. Like a hedge-hog, he is all 
quills. Like a crab that, you know, always goes the 

other way, and moves backward in order to go for- 

* 

ward, and turns in four directions all at once, and the 
first you know of his whereabouts you have missed 
him, and when he is completely lost he has gone by 
the heel—so that the first thing you know you don’t 
know anything—and while you expected to catch the 
crab, the crab catches you. 

So some men are crabbed—all hard-shell and 
obstinacy and opposition. I do not see how he is to 


get into heaven, unless he goes in backward, and 
then there will be danger that at the gate he will try 
to pick a quarrel with St. Peter. Once in, I fear he 
will not like the music, and the services will be too 
long, and that he will spend the first two or three 
years in trying to find out whether the wall of heaven 
is exactly plumb. Let us stand off from such 
tendencies. Listen for sweet notes rather than dis¬ 
cords, picking up marigolds and harebells in preference 
to thistles and coloquintida, culturing thyme and ane¬ 
mones rather than night-shade. And in a world 
where God has put exquisite tinge upon the shell 
washed in the surf, and planted a paradise of bloom 
in a child’s cheek, and adorned the pillars of the rock 
by hanging tapestry of morning mist, the lark 
saying, “ I will sing soprano,” and the cascade re¬ 
plying, “ I will carry the bass,” let us leave it to the 
owl to hoot, and the frog to croak, and the bear to 
growl, and the grumbler to find fault. 

■ - •<>♦ 

PUTTING UP O’ THE STOVE; OR, THE 
RIME OF THE ECONOMICAL 
HOUSEHOLDER. 


HE melancholy days have come that no 
householder loves, 

Days of taking down of blinds and putting 
up of stoves; 

The lengths of pipe forgotten lie in the shadow of the 
shed, , 

Dinged out of symmetry they be and all with rust 
are red; 

The husband gropes amid the mass that he placed 
there anon, 

And swears to find an elbow-joint and eke a leg are 
gone. 

So fared it with good Mister Brown, when his spouse 
remarked : “ Behold ! 

Unless you wish us all to go and catch our deaths of 
cold, 

Swift be yon stove and pipes from out their storing 
place conveyed, 

And to black-lead and set them up, lo ! I will lend 
my aid.” 

This, Mr. Brown, he trembling heard, I trow his 
heart was sore, 

For he was married many years, and had been there 
before, 











520 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


And timidly he said, “ My love, perchance, the better 
plan 

’Twere to hie to the tinsmith's shop and bid him send 

9 >> 

a man r 

His spouse replied indignantly: “ So you would have 
me then 

To waste our substance upon riotous tinsmith’s 
journeymen ? 

‘A penny saved is twopence earned,’ rash prodigal of 
pelf, 

Go! false one, go! and I will black and set it up 
myself. 

When thus she spoke the husband knew that she had 
sealed his doom ; 

“ Fill high the bowl with Samian lead and gimme 
down that broom,” 

He cried ; then to the outhouse marched. Apart the 
doors he hove 

And closed in deadly conflict with his enemy, the 
stove. 

Round 1. 

They faced each other; Brown, to get an opening 
sparred 

Adroitly. His antagonist was cautious—on its 
guard. 

Brown led off with his left to where a length of 
stovepipe stood, 

And nearly cut his fingers off. ( The stove allowed 
first blood .) 

Round 2. 

Brown came up swearing, in Graeco-Roman style, 

Closed with the stove, and tugged and strove at it a 
weary while; 

At last the leg he held gave way ; flat on his back 
fell Brown, 

And the stove fell on top of him and claimed the 
First Knock-down. 

* * * The fierht is done and Brown has won ; his 
hands are rasped and sore, 

And perspiration and black-lead stream from his 
every pore; 

Sternly triumphant, as he gives his prisoner a shove, 

He cries, “ Where, my good angel, shall I put this 
blessed stove ? ” 

i And calmly Mrs. Brown to him she indicates the 
spot, 

And bids him keep his temper, and remarks that he 
looks hot, 

And now comes in the sweat o’ the day ; the Brown 
holds in his gripe 


And strives to fit a six-inch joint into a five-inch 
pipe;. 

He hammers, dinges, bends, and shakes, while his 
wife scornfully 

Tells him how she would manage if only she were he. 

At last the joints are joined, they rear a pyramid in 
air, 

A tub upon the table, and upon the tub a chair, 

And on chair and supporters are the stovepipe and 
the Brown, 

Like the lion and the unicorn, a-fighting for the 
crown ; 

While Mistress Brown, she cheerily says to him, “ I 
expec’ 

’Twould be just like your clumsiness to fall and break 
your neck.” 

Scarce were the piteous accents said before she was 
aware 

Of what might be called “ a miscellaneous music in 
the air.” 

And in wild crash and confusion upon the floor rained 
down 

Chairs, tables, tubs, and stovepipes, anathemas, and 
—Brown. 

There was a moment’s silence—Brown had fallen on 
the cat; 

She was too thick for a book-mark, but too thin for 
a mat; 

And he was all wounds and bruises, from his head to 

his foot, 

And seven breadths of Brussels were ruined with the 

soot. 

“ 0 wedded love, how beautiful, how sweet a thing 
thou art! ” 

Up from her chair did Mistress Brown, as she saw 
him falling, start, 

And shrieked aloud as a sickening fear did her 
inmost heartstrings gripe, 

“ Josiah Winterbotham Brown, have you gone and 
smashed that pipe ? ” 

Then fiercely starts that Mr. Brown, as one that had 
been wode, 

And big his bosom swelled with wrath, and red his 
visage glowed; 

Wild rolled his eye as he made reply (and his voice 
was sharp and shrill), 

“ I have not, madam, but, by—by—bv the nine gods r 
I will!” 

He swung the pipe above his head; he dashed it on 
the floor, 









MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


521 


And that stovepipe, as a stovepipe, it did exist no 
more; 

Then he strode up to his shrinking wife, and his face 
was stern and wan, 

And in a hoarse, changed voice he hissed : 

“ Send for that tinsmith's man ! " 


-♦O*- 


THI1 POOR INDIAN! 

KNOW him by his falcon eye, 

His raven tress and mien of pride; 

Th ose dingy draperies, as they fly, 

Tell that a great soul throbs inside! 

No eagle-feathered crown he wears, 

Capping in pride his kingly brow; 

But his crownless hat in grief declares, 

“ I am an unthroned monarch now ! ” 

“ 0 noble son of a royal line ! ” 

I exclaim, as I gaze into his face, 

“ How shall I knit my soul to thine ? 

How right the wrongs of thine injured race? 

“ What shall I do for thee, glorious one ? 

To soothe thy sorrows my soul aspires. 

Speak ! and say how the Saxon’s son 

May atone for the wrongs of his ruthless sires ! ” 

He speaks, he speaks !—that noble chief! 

From his marble lips deep accents come; 

And I catch the sound of his mighty grief,— 

“ Pie' gi' me tree cent for git some rum ? " 



JENKINS GOES TO A PICNIC. 

ARIA ANN recently determined to go to a 
picnic. 

Maria Ann is my wife—unfortunately 
she had planned it to go alone, so far as I am con¬ 
cerned, on that picnic excursion ; but when I heard 

about it, I determined to assist. 

’ * 

She pretended she was very glad ; I don’t believe 



my slumbers, and told me to come to breakfast. I 
told her I wasn t hungry, but it didn’t make a bit of 
difference, I had to get up. The sun was up ; I had 
no idea that the sun began his business so early in 
the morning, but there he was. 

“ Now,” said Maria Ann, “ we must fly around, 
for the cars start at half-past six. Eat all the break¬ 
fast you can, for you won’t get anything more before 
noon.” 

I could not eat anything so early in the morning. 
There was ice to be pounded to go around the pail of 
ice cream, and the sandwiches to be cut, and I 
thought I would never get the legs of the chicken 
fixed so I could get the cover on the big basket. 
Maria Ann flew around and piled up groceries for me 
to pack, giving directions to the girl about taking 
care of the house, and putting on her dress all at 
once. There is a deal of energy in that woman, 
perhaps a trifle too much. 

At twenty minutes past six I stood on the front 
steps, with a basket on one arm and Maria Ann’s 
waterproof on the other, and a pail in each hand, and 
a bottle of vinegar in my coat-skirt pocket. There 
was a camp-chair hung on me somewhere, too, but I 
forget just where. 

“Now,” said Maria Ann, “we must run or we 
shall not catch the train.” 

“ Maria Ann,” said I, “ that is a reasonable idea. 
How do you suppose I can run with all this freight? ” 

“ You must, you brute. You always try to tease 
me. If you don’t want a scene on the street, you 
will start, too.” 

So I ran. 

I had one comfort, at least. Maria Ann fell down 
and broke her parasol. She called me a brute again 
because I laughed. She drove me all the way to the 
depot at a brisk trot, and we got on the cars; but 
neither of us could get a seat, and I could not find a 
place where I could set the things down, so I stood 
there and held them. 

“ Maria,” I said, “ how is this for a cool morning 


she was. 

“ It will do you good to get away from your work 
a day, poor fellow,” she said; “ and we shall so much 
enjoy a cool morning ride on the cars, and a dinner 
in the woods.” 

On the morning of that day, Maria Ann got up at 
five o’clock. About three minutes later she disturbed 


ride ? ” 

Said she, “ You are a brute, Jenkins.” 

Said I, “ You have made that observation before, 
my love.” 

I kept my courage up, yet I knew there would be 
an hour of wrath when we got home. While we 
| were getting out of the cars, the bottle in my coat- 

















522 


MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


pocket broke, and consequently I had one boot half¬ 
full of vinegar all day. That kept me pretty quiet, 
and Maria Ann ran off with a big whiskered music- 
teacher, and lost her fan, and got her feet wet, and 
tore her dress, and enjoyed herself so much, after the 
fashion of picnic-goers. 

I thought it would never come dinner-time, and 
Maria Ann called me a pig because I wanted to open 
our basket before the rest of the baskets were opened. 

At last dinner came—the “ nice dinner in the 
woods,” you know. Over three thousand little red 
ants had got into our dinner, and they were worse to 
pick out than fish-bones. The ice-cream had melted, 
and there was no vinegar for the cold meat, except 
what was in my boot, and, of course, that was of no 
immediate use. The music-teacher spilled a cup of 
hot coffee on Maria Ann’s head, and pulled all the 
frizzles out trying to wipe off the coffee with his 
handkerchief. Then I sat on a piece of raspberry- 
pie, and spoiled my white pants, ,and concluded I 
didn’t want anything more. I had to stand up 
against a tree the rest of the afternoon. The day 
offered considerable variety, compared to everyday 
life, but there were so many drawbacks that I did not 
enjoy it so much as I might have done. 


SEWING ON A BUTTON. 

BY J. M. BAILEY. 

T is bad enough to see a bachelor sew on a 

O 

button, but he is the embodiment of grace 
alongside of a married man. Necessity has 
compelled experience in the case of the former, 
but the latter has always depended upon some one 
else for this service, and fortunately, for the sake of 
society, it is rarely he is obliged to resort to the 
needle himself. Sometimes the patient wife scalds 
her right hand or runs a sliver under the nail of the 
index finger of that hand, and it is then the man 
clutches the needle around the neck, and forgetting 
to tie a knot in the thread commences to put on the 
button. It is always in the morning, and from five 
to twenty minutes after he is expected to be down 
street. He lays the button exactly on the site of its 
predecessor, and pushes the needle through one eye, 
and carefully draws the thread after, leaving about 
three inches of it sticking up for a leeway. He says 



to himself,—“ Well, if women don’t have the easiest 
time I ever see.”. Then he comes back the other 
way, and gets the needle through the cloth well 
enough, and lays himself out to find the eye, but in 
spite of a great deal of patient jabbing, the needle 
point persists in bucking against the solid parts of 
that button, and, finally, when he loses patience, his 
fingers catch the thread, and that three inches he 
had left to hold the button slips through the eye 
in a twinkling, and the button rolls leisurely across 
the floor. He picks it up without a single remark, 
out of respect to his children, and makes another 
attempt to fasten it. This time when coming back 
with the needle he keeps both the thread and button 
from slipping by covering them with his thumb, and 
it is out of regard for that part of him that he feels 
around for the eye in a very careful and judicious 
manner; but eventually losing his philosophy as the 
search becomes more and more hopeless, he falls to 
jabbing about in a loose and savage manner, and it is 
just then the needle finds the opening, and comes 
up through the button and part way through his 
thumb with a celerity that no human ingenuity can 
guard against. Then he lays down the things, with 
a few familiar quotations, and presses the injured 
hand between his knees, and then holds it under the 
other arm, and finally jams it into his mouth, and all 
the while he prances about the floor, and calls upon 
heaven and earth to witness that there has never 
been anything like it since the world was created, 
and howls, and whistles, and moans, and sobs. After 
awhile, he calms down, and puts on his pants, and 
fastens them together with a stick, and goes to his 
business a changed man. 


-+<>• 


CASEY AT THE BAT. 

(Often recited by DeWolf Hopper, the comic opera 
singer, between the acts.) 


HERE was ease in Casey’s manner as he 
stepped into his place, 

There was pride in Casey’s bearing, and a 
smile on Casey’s face ; 

And when responding to the cheers he lightly doffed 
his hat, 

No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at 
the bat. 

















MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES. 


523 


Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his 
hands with dirt, 

Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped 
them on his shirt; 

Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into 
his hip, 

Defiance glanced in Casey’s eye, a sneer curled 
Casey’s lip. 

And now the leather-covered sphere came whirling 
thro’ the air, 

And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur 
there; 

Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped. 

“ That ain’t my style,” said Casey, “ Strike one,” 
the umpire said. 

From the benches, black with people, there went up 
a muffled roar, 

Like the beating of storm waves on a stern and 
distant shore; 

c1 Kill him! kill the umpire ! ” shouted some one on 
the stand. 

And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey 
raised his hand. 


And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere 
children shout, 

But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has 
struck out. 

-K>< ■ 


THE MAGICAL ISLE. 

HERE’S a magical isle in the River of Time, 
Where softest of echoes are straying ; 
And the air is as soft as a musical chime, 
Or the exquisite breath of a tropical clime 
When June with its roses is swaying. 

Tis where memory dwells with her pure golden hue 
And music forever is flowing: 

While the low-murmured tones that come trembling 
through 

Sadly trouble the heart, yet sweeten it too, 

As the south wind o’er water when blowing. 

There are shadowy halls in that fairy-like isle, 

Where pictures of beauty are gleaming; 

Yet the light of their eyes, and their sweet, sunny 
smile, 

Only flash round the heart with a wildering wile, 
And leave us to know ’tis but dreaming. 



With a smile of Christian charity great Casey’s visage 
shone, 

He stilled the rising tumult, he bade the game go on ; 

He signalled to the pitcher, and once more the 
spheroid flew, 

But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, 
“ Strike two.” 

“ Fraud ! ” cried the maddened thousands, and the 
echo answered, “ Fraud ! ” 

But the scornful look from Casey, and the audience 
was awed; 

They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his 
muscles strain, 

And they knew that Casey wouldn’t let that ball go 
by again. 

The sneer is gone from Casey’s lips, his teeth are 
clenched in hate, 

He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the 
plate; 

And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets 
it go. 

And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s 
blow. 

Oh! somewhere in this favored land the sun is 
shining bright, 

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere 
hearts are light; 


And the name of this isle is the Beautiful Past, 

And we bury our treasures all there: 

There are beings of beauty too lovely to last; 

There are blossoms of snow, with the dust o’er them 
cast; 

There are tresses and ringlets of hair. 

There are fragments of song only memory sings, 

And the words of a dear mother’s prayer; 

There’s a harp long unsought, and a lute without 
strings— 

Hallowed tokens that love used to wear. 

E’en the dead—the bright, beautiful dead—there 

arise, 

With their soft, flowing ringlets of gold : 

Though their voices are hushed, and o’er their sweet 
eyes, 

The unbroken signet of silence now lies, 

They are with us again, as of old. 

In the stillness of night, hands are beckoning there, 
And, with joy that is almost a pain, 

We delight to turn back, and in wandering there, 
Through the shadowy halls of the island so fair, 

We behold our lost treasures again. 

Oh ! this beautiful isle, with its phantom-like show, 
Is a vista exceedingly bright: 

And the River of Time, in its turbulent flow, 

Is oft soothed by the voices we heard long ago, 
When the years were a dream of delight. 













STRAY BITS OF CHARACTER 



THE TOURIST. 


By Will Carleton. 

With original illustrations by Victor Perard. 

In art, as well as literature, there should be a vast va¬ 
riety of methods, for a good many kinds of people wait to 
be instructed and pleased. Besides, there is frequently a 
great diversity of moods in the same person—all of which 
must be ministered to, at one time and another. 

Some people, and perhaps all, when in certain states of 
mind, are fond of pictures brought out with photo¬ 
graphic accuracy ; every detail attended to ; every¬ 
thing provided for ; every incident faithfully re¬ 
lated. Others prefer only the salient points—a 
mere suggestion of items is sufficient. They have 
no time for anything more—they want the spirit, 
the soul, of the scene and situation. 

Victor Perard’s work upon these pages will 
minister most to the latter class of people and 
moods. As one orator can give in ten words the 
story that another one has struggled with much 
voice and many gestures for an hour to make 
plain, so this silent story-teller dashes his 
pencil across the paper a few times, and be- / 

hold ! you see just what you already may AT the lunch stand. 




THE STREET TO THE SEA. 













































Stray Bits of Character 

have noticed again and again, but never before rec¬ 
ognized in all its possibilities. You now have be¬ 
fore you for a steady gaze, that of which you have 
had only a glimpse, a sketch that supplies the place 
of memory, shakes hands with imagination, and 
enables you to enjoy the scene at leisure. 

These are pictures that explain themselves, or 
at least permit the gazer to furnish his own explan¬ 
ation—and that is the most complimentary of all imag¬ 
inative work, and produces a species of gratitude in 
f the minds of the audience. 

Victor Perard is one of the younger artists of 
our country. His name would indicate him to 
be of French descent; but he is, I believe, a na¬ 
tive of the Greater America, which has thus far 
shown such a cheerful willingness to assimilate 
the best brain of the world. He has, however, 
lived in Paris, and contributed to some of the 
leading French illustrated journals. He is now 
living a quiet domestic life in our American metropolis, and 
has done much good work for its periodicals. 

In “The Tourist,” one notices with every line of the sol¬ 
emn-looking individual an intense desire to get over the 
ground promptly and see everything possible on the way. 
There is something in the painful though unstudied diligence 
with which he keeps his carpet bag close to his person, that 
may enable a lively imagination to peep through its sides 
and detect notes for a forthcoming book. 


5 


25 



THE OILER. 



IN WAIT. 



EXPECTING A CALLER. 


















































52G 


Stray Bits of Character 





A WIDE-REACHING AFFAIR. 


A VETERAN OF THE RANKS. 


“ At the Lunch Stand ” is Whit¬ 
tier’s “ Barefoot Boy,” transferred 
to the city. His lips are not 
“ redder still, kissed by straw¬ 
berries on the hill ; ” nor may he be 
coated with “ outward sunshine,” 
or full of “inner joy.” The lux¬ 
urious bowl of milk and 
bread which our Quaker 
poet describes, is not his, 
even with the wooden dish 
and pewter spoon ; but he 
seems happy for the moment 
with the cup of more or less \ 
hot coffee which he imbibes. 

His jaunty, independent attitude 
shows that he is bound to get all 
the good of his powerful and per¬ 
haps palatable beverage ; that he earned it, and 
is entitled to it. 

“ The Street to the Sea ” is in fact a picture 
of the sea, although the same is hardly in sight. Everything shows that we are 
approaching the great Country of the Waters. The villas in view ; the wheel- 
harrowed road, admirably foreshortened ; the deep shadows upon each side of the 
way ; human figures looming faintly in the distance ; everything, in fact, is some¬ 
how telling us a tale of the ocean, and we do not need our too sparse glimpse of 
the “solemn main ” to tell what majestic voice will soon bring us to a halt; we al¬ 
most smell the salt air. 

mat. 

who has hung out his latch-string 
and is waiting for a dinner to call 
upon him, is Perard with a god¬ 
send of material—-of the kind he likes. 

There could scarcely be found a better 
wedding of shiftlessness and ingenuity. 

The primitive character of the man’s 
garments is apparently not due to the 
climate alone ; he takes no thought 
of the morrow, and not much of 
the current day, so far as its 
k temporal affairs are concerned. 

But the crude marks of mechani¬ 
cal ability are all over and around him ; 
one suspender is induced, by its oblique 
trend, to do service for two ; an elaborate coil of 
line gives opportunity of play for the largest of 
fin-bearers ; the stick in the sand guar¬ 
antees that his expected caller shall not 
who’s that coming?” go away without experiencing the fisher- 


The lazy fisherman 


LEISURE. 














Stray Bits of Character 






man’s peculiar hospitality ; and there is con¬ 
siderable chance that if a “ bite ” occurs, the 
line will waken him, as it gradually warms 
the interstice between his toes. 

“ A Veteran of the Ranks ” might almost be 
Kipling’s Mulvaney himself. The fatisrue- 
cap, which in its jaunty pose seems 
to have vegetated and grown 
there ; the drooping mus¬ 
tache ; the capacious pipe ; 
are all what might have been characteristics 
of that renowned Hibernian warrior of India. 
The picture finally centres, however, in the 
eyes ; which contain a world, or at least two 
hemispheres, of shrewdness, of that sort 
which only gets about so far in life, but is 
terribly correct within its own scope. They 
also possess a certain humanity and generos¬ 
ity, which would be likely to act as winsome daughters of his regiment 
of martial qualities, even upon the battle-field. 


MCCLELLAN SADDLE. 


“ Minia- 
the most in- 
knows, there 


SHOOTING THE STEAM 
ARROW. 


“GRACIOUS GOODNESS!” 


ture Men and Women ” include a number of 
teresting of the genus Baby. As everyone 
are babies and babies, except to the par¬ 
ents of one. The infant is the true 
teacher and object-lesson combined ; it 
shows us the grace, although not al¬ 
ways the mercy and peace, of unconscious action. 
It has not been away from Heaven long enough 
to learn the deceit of this crooked world, is 
unaware that there is anything in 
life to conceal, and acts accord¬ 
ingly, until taught better, or, 
perhaps, worse. These ba¬ 
bies, or this baby (for the 
same infant has so 
many different ways of 
acting and appearing, that these may 
all be pictures of the same) can be 
said to exhibit grace in every atti¬ 
tude and every position, from the sym¬ 
metrical fragment of humanity on the 
mother’s arm, to the tot just contem¬ 
plating a walking-lesson. All of them 
have a dignified simplicity. 

“ Bon Voyage ” shows the different ^ 
attitudes which men will take while 
intently gazing at the same object. 

It does not necessarily follow that 


ON WINGS OF HOOFS. 























528 


Stray Bits of Character 



■ the “ she ” referred to is a lady ; it may be and 
\ j probably is, a ship, upon which all of our captured 
o-azers have friends. Each one takes his 

o 

own peculiar posture of observation ; and 
their characters can be read from them. 

“ Waiting for Orders ” is a faithful and 
almost pathetic presentation of that patient, 
long-suffering, but unreliable beast, whose 
lack of pride and hope have passed into a 
proverb. One is curious, seeing him stand¬ 
ing there, how life can ever manage to 
wheedle him into the idea that it is worth 
living ; but the same curiosity arises in re- 
gard to some men. We often find that these 
W have stowed away upon their persons cer¬ 
tain grains of comfort, concerning which 
we at first failed to take note. Our utterly 
opaque friend here has pleasanter 
experiences in the world than 
that of acting as a locomotive 


MINIATURE MEN AND WOMEN. 


to a cart. The dashes of the breeze, 
the transports of the sun-bath, the 
pull at the water-bucket, the nourish¬ 
ment in the manger, all yield him 
tribute in a certain amount of pleas¬ 
ure ; he has no responsibility upon 
his mind, excepting that he is to pull 
when told to ; and although occa¬ 
sionally suffering maltreatment from 
the superior race in which he recognizes many 
of his own characteristics, there is no know¬ 
ing how soon he may revenge it all, in the twin¬ 
kling of a pair of heels. 

Mr. Perard discovers himself in these sketches 

to be a facile 
shrewd and 
observer, and 





WAITING ORDERS. 


technician, a 
sympathetic 
several dif¬ 
ferent kinds of a man—all good kinds. 
Observe one thing about him : he is 
healthy and sound all through. His work 
is calm, firm, and kind. There is heart 
in it. There is quite as warm a cor- 
ner in that heart for the ragamuf- 
fin as there is for the howling swell. 




BON X 



















GLIMPSES OF “ DREAM-LIFE” 
Pabt Second 
By Ik Marvel 



With original illustrations by Corwin K. 

Lin son. 

The scene now changes to the cloister of 
a college. Your room is scantily fur¬ 
nished, and even the books are few —a 
couple of grammars, a Euclid, a Xeno¬ 
phon, a Homer and a Livy. Besides 
these classics there are scattered about 
here and there a thumb-worn copy of 
British ballads, an odd volume of the 
'Sketch Book. ” a clumsy Shakespeare, and 
a pocket edition of the Bible. With such, 
appliances, added to the half-score of pro¬ 
fessors and tutors who preside over the 
awful precincts, you are to work your way* 
to measure yourself with men; and your chum, a hard-faced fel- 



“ A COSY SIT-DOWN OYER OYSTERS AND CHAMPAGNE ‘ J 

5 2 9 












530 


Glimpses of “Dream-Life” 





“‘MADGE,’ SHE SAYS, ‘IS SITTING BY ME WITH HER WORK’” 


low of ten or more years than you — digging sturdily at his tasks, seems by that 
very community of work to dignify your labor. 

You have a classmate—1 will call him Dalton—who is very intimate with a 
dashing Senior, and it is a proud thing to happen at their rooms occasionally, and 
to match yourself for an hour or two (with the windows darkened) against a Senioi 
at “ old sledge. ” Sometimes you go to have a cozy sit-down over oysters and 
champagne;—to which the Senior lends himself, with the pleasantest condescen¬ 
sion in the world. You are not altogether used to hard drinking; but this, you 
conceal—as most spirited young fellows do—by drinking a great deal. You have 
a dim recollection of certain circumstances—very unimportant, yet very vividly 
impressed on your mind—which occurred on one of these occasions. 

The oysters were exceedingly fine, and the champagne—exquisite. You have 
a recollection of something being said, toward the end of the first bottle, of Xeno¬ 
phon, and of the Senior’s saying in his playful way—“ Oh, d—n Xenophon!” 

You remember that Dalton broke out into a song, and that for a time you 

joined in the chorus; you think 
the Senior called you to order 
for repeating the chorus in the 
wrong place. You think the 
lights burned with remarkable 
brilliancy; and there is a rec¬ 
ollection of an uncommon diz¬ 
ziness afterward—as if your 
body was very quiet, and your 
head gyrating with strange ve¬ 
locity, and a kind of centrifu¬ 
gal action, all about the room, 
and the college, and indeed the 
whole town. 









Glimpses of “Dream-Life” 


53i 




In following the mental vagaries of 
youth, I must not forget the curvetings 
and wiltings of the heart. The black- 
eyed Jenny has long been forgotten. 
As for Madge, the memory of her has 
been more wakeful, but less violent. 
Nelly’s letters not unfrequently drop 
a careless half-sentence, that keeps 
her strangely in mind. “ Madge,” she 
says, “ is sitting by me with her work;” 
or, “ you ought to see the little silk 
purse that Madge is knitting.” All 
this will keep Madge in mind in those 
odd half-hours that come stealing over 
one at twilight. A new romantic ad¬ 
miration is started by those lady-faces 
which light up, on a Sunday, the gal- 


“ UPON THE GRASSY BANK OF A 
STREAM ” 


7 


lery of the college chapel, 
and the prettily shaped fig¬ 
ures that go floating along 

the thoroughfares of the old town. 

But this cannot last. As the years 
drop off a certain pair of eyes beams one 
day upon you, that seems to have bee:_ 
taken out of a page of Greek poetry. 
The figure, too, might easily be that of 
Helen, or of Andromache. You gaze— 
ashamed to gaze; and it is no young girl, 
who is thus testing you; there is too 
much pride for that. A ripeness and ma¬ 
turity rest upon her look and figure that com¬ 
pletely fill up that ideal. After a time you 
find that she is the accomplished sister of your 
friend Dalton; she is at least ten years Dalton’s 
senior; and by even more 
years your own! 


Very few individu¬ 
als in the world pos¬ 
sess that happy con- 
sciousnessof their own 
prowess, which be¬ 
longs to the newly 
graduated collegian. 
He has no idea of de¬ 
feat ; he proposes to 
take the world by 
storm; he is half sur- 


. 




“he wears his honor at the public tables’ 
















































































53 2 


Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 




prised that quiet people are not startled by his 
presence. He brushes with an air of import¬ 
ance about the halls of country hotels; he f 
wears his honor at the public tables; he fan- ( 
cies that the inattentive guests can have J - 
little idea that the young gentleman, who so ; 
recently delighted the public ear with his dis¬ 
sertation on the “General Tendency of Opin¬ 
ion, “ is actually among them, and quietly 
eating from the same dish of beef. 

Your mother half fears your alienation 
from the affections of home. Her letters all 
run over with a tenderness that makes you 
sigh, and that makes you feel a deep reproach 
and consciousness of neglect at heart. 


“we are quite alone, now, my boy” 


But an experience is approaching 
Clarence, that will drive his heart home 
for shelter like a wounded bird! The 
vision of your last college-year is not 
gone. That figure whose elegance your 
eyes then feasted on, still floats before 
you; and the memory of 
the last talk with Laura 
is as vivid as if it were 
only yesterday that you f 
listened to her. In¬ 
deed,this openingcam- ; 
paign of travel,— al¬ 
though you 
are almost 
ashamed to / Jjjtfj 
confess it ‘ 
yourself, 
is guid- f j 
ed by the ( | 
thought 


“THE MOONLIT WALKS UPON THE HILLS” 


of her. 
Dalton, 

and a party of friends, his sister among them, are 
journeying to the north. A hope of meeting 
them, scarcely acknowledged, spurs you on. 

Your thought bounds away from the beauty 
of sky and lake, and fastens upon the ideal 
which your dreamy humors cherish. The 
very glow of pursuit heightens your fer¬ 
vor : — a fervor that dims sadly the newly 








‘DEATH—IT IS A TERRIBLE WORD” 














Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 


533 




entranced you first. They urge you 
to join their party. But there is no 

need of urgence; those eyes, that figure, the whole pres- 
ence, indeed, of Miss Dalton, attracts you with a power 
which you can neither explain nor resist. Is it a dream, W 
or is it earnest, those moonlit walks upon the hills that skirt I 

, L „ - _ the city, when you watch ty 

'—j the stars, listening to her 

1 IHkSSw* ' {••-»-"• - voice, and feel the pressure of that jeweled hand upon 
t_0 T4 \ - your arm? Poor Clarence! it is his first look at Life! 

fSSIlgB tin* J__ With such attendance you draw toward the 


READ IT AGAIN 


[“PLUMP AND THRIVING 


vss i .' iYt 












“you put your hands in your pockets and look out upon the tossing sea” 






















































534 


Glimpses of “ Dream-Life ” 




your cheeks. Your heart throbs — throbs, 
harder—throbs tumultuously. You bite your 
lip; for there are lookers-on. But it will not 
do. You hurry away; you find your chamber 
and burst into a flood of tears. 

It is Nelly’s own fair hand, yet sadly 
blotted;—blotted with her tears, and blotted 
with yours. 

“It is all over, dear, dear Clarence!” she 
writes. “I can hardly now believe that our 
poor mother is indeed dead.” 

Dead!—It is a terrible word. 

For a long time you remain with only that 
letter and your thought for company. You 
pace up and down your chamber; again you 
seat yourself, and lean your head upon the 
table, enfeebled by the very grief that you 
cherish still. The whole day passes thus; you 
excuse yourself from all companionship; you have not the heart to tell the story of 
your troubles to Dalton—least of all, to Miss Dalton. Ten days after, you are 
walking toward the old homestead, with feelings such as it never called up before. 
Nelly is waiting for you, and your father is seated in his accustomed chair. 

You approach, and your father takes your hand again, with a firm grasp— 
looks at you thoughtfully—drops his eyes upon the fire, and for a moment there is 
a pause—“ We are quite alone, now, my boy!” 


“BLUE-EYED MADGE” 


Youthful passion is a giant. It overleaps all the dreams, 
and all tne resolves of our better and quieter nature; and 
drives madly toward some wild issue, that lives only in its 
frenzy. 


”■> - H 


. & • f 

' ■ 




r- 


m 


. -(j li* 




THE OLD CLERGYMAN SLEEPS BENEATH A BROWN-STONE SLAB” 














Glimpses of “Dream-Life” 


535 


The last scene of summer changes now to the cobwebbed ceiling of an attor¬ 
ney’s office. Books of law, scattered ingloriously at your elbow, speak dully to 
the flush of your vanities. You are seated at your small side-desk, where you have 
wrought at those heavy mechanic labors of drafting, which go before a knowledge 
of your craft. A letter is by you, which you regard with strange feelings; it is yet 
unopened. It comes from Laura. It is in reply to one which has cost you very 
much of exquisite elaboration. You have made your avowal of feeling as much 
like a poem as your education would admit. Indeed, it was a pretty letter, in 
which vanity of intellect had taken a very entertaining part, and in which your 
judgment was too cool to appear at all. We will look only at a closing passage: 

-“ My friend Clarence will, I trust, believe me, when I say that his letter was a surprise 

to me. To say that it was very grateful, would be what my womanly vanity could not fail to 
claim. I only wish that I was equal to the flattering portrait which he has drawn. I even 
half fancy that he is joking me, and can hardly believe that my matronly air should have 
quite won his youthful heart. At least I shall try not to believe it; and when I welcome him 
one day, the husband of some fairy, who is worthy of his love, we will smile together at the 
old lady who once played the Circe to his senses. Seriously, my friend Clarence, I know 
your impulse of heart has carried you away; and that in a year’s time you will smile with 
me, at your old penchant for one so much your senior, and so ill-suited to your years, as 
your true friend. —Laura.” 


Magnificent Miss Dalton! Read it again. Stick your knife in the desk—tut!— 








Glimpses of “ Dream-Life” 


you will break the blade! Fold up the letter carefully, and toss it upon your pile of 
papers. Open Chitty again;—pleasant reading is Chitty! Lean upon your hand— 
your two hands;—so that no one will catch sight of your face. Chitty is very inter¬ 
esting; how sparkling and imaginative—what a depth and flow of passion in Chitty! 

It would be well not to betray your eagerness to go. You can brush your hat 
a round or two, and take a peep into the broken bit of looking-glass over the 
wash-stand. You lengthen your walk, as you sometimes do, by a stroll upon the 
Battery—though rarely, upon such a blustering November day. You put your 
hands in your pockets, and look out upon the tossing sea. It is a fine sight—very 
fine. There are few finer bays in the world than New York bay; either to look 
at, or—for that matter—to sleep in. You try sadly to be cheerful; you smile 
oddly; your pride comes strongly to your help, but yet helps you very little. If 
is not so much a broken heart, that you have to mourn over, as a broken dream. 

It is not long, to be sure, since the summer of life ended with that broke* 
hope; but the few years that lie between have given long steps upward. There 
have been changes in the home-life. Nelly is a wife and the husband yonder, as 
you may have dreamed, is your old friend Frank. As for Jenny—your first fond 
flame!—she is now the plump and thriving wife of the apothecary of the town! 
She sweeps out every morning, at seven, the little entry of the apothecary’s house; 
she wears a sky-blue calico gown, and dresses her hair in three little flat quirls or* 
either side of her head. 

\y * • ■ 

The heats of the city drive you away and you are at home again—at Frank’s 
house. You ramble over the hills that once bounded your boyish vision, and in 


. ,v ^ 

&&•'****% y ■+******' 

“AND YOU HAVE WORN THIS, MAGGIE ?” 




Glimpses of “Dream-Life” 


537 



the view of those sweet scenes which belonged to early 
days, when neither strength, confidence, nor wealth 
were yours, days never to come again—a shade of 
melancholy broods upon your spirit, and covers with 
its veil all that fierce pride which your worldly wisdom 
has wrought. The boys whom you astounded with 
your stories of books are gone, building up now with 
steady industry the queen cities of our new western 
land. The old clergyman—he sleeps beneath a brown- 
stone slab in the churchyard. The stout deacon is 
dead; his wig and his wickedness rest together. The 
tali chorister sings yet; but they have now a bass-viol, 
handled by a new schoolmaster, in place of his tun¬ 
ing-fork; and the years have sown feeble quavers in 
his voice. 

Once more you meet, at the home of Nelly, the 
blue-eyed Madge. The sixpence is all forgotten; you 
cannot tell where your half of it is gone. Yet she is 
beautiful—just budding into the full ripeness of 
womanhood. Her eyes have a quiet still joy and hope 


A FATHER! 


beaming in the m , 
like angel’s looks. 
Her motions have a 
native grace and 
freedom, that no 
culture can bestow. She is dignified and calm and 
sweet. Her words have a gentle earnestness and 
honesty, that could never nurture guile. 

Strange feelings come over you;—feelings like 
half-forgotten memories — musical — dreamy — 
doubtful. You have seen a hundred faces more 
brilliant than that of Madge; you have 
pressed a hundred jeweled hands that 



y 
'c.... . 


, r '' 'Y.'V- ' , . • 

4T yv\ ir j.p/ / 
sr/r- ■ -l vVi, ‘-kT '-j / jU. 



S' Ws-Of: 

/N <L • 


YOUR COUNTRY HOME 
















538 


Glimpses of “Dream-Life” 


have returned a half-pressure to yours. 
You do not exactly admire; to love, you 
have forgotten; you only—linger! 




You have returned to your noisy ambi¬ 
tious office-life, but after a time sick¬ 
ness has overcome you, and as soon as 
you have gained strength once more you 
go back to Nelly’s home. Again your 
eye rests upon that figure of Madge, and 
upon her face, wearing an even gentler 
expression, as she sees you sitting pale 
and feeble by the old hearthstone. She 
brings flowers — for Nelly: you beg 
Nelly to place them upon the little 
table at your side. It is the only taste 
of the country that you are enabled, as 
yet, to enjoy. You love those flowers. 

It is strange—this feeling in you. It is not the feeling you had for Laura 
Dalton. It does not even remind you of that. That was an impulse; but this is 
growth. That was strong; but this is—strength. If it were not too late! 

A year passes and summer comes again. You have been walking over the 
hills of home with Madge and Nelly. Nelly has found some excuse to leave you, 
glancing at you most teasingly as she hurries away. You are left sitting with 

Madge, upon a bank tufted with blue 
violets. You have been talking of the 
days of childhood, and some word has 
called up the old chain of boyish feel¬ 
ing, and joined it to your new hope. 
What you would say crowds too fast 
for utterance; and you abandon it. 
But you take from your pocket that 
little old broken bit of sixpence—which 
you have found after long search—and 
without a word, but with a look that 
tells your inmost thought, you lay it in 
the half-opened hand of Madge. She 
looks at you, with a slight suffusion of 
color—seems to hesitate a moment— 
raises her other hand, and draws from 
her bosom, by a bit of blue ribbon, a 
little locket. She touches a spring, and 
there falls beside your relic—another 
that had once belonged to it. 

Hope glows now, like the sun! 

-“ And you have worn this, 

•MADGE, MADGE, MUST IT BE?’ AND A PLEASANT May'S'ie?” 

SMILE LIGHTS HER EYE; AND HER GRASP IS \ t 

warmer; AND HER LOOK IS—UPWARD” - 44 Always.” 












539 


Glimpses of “Dream-Life” 








THAT IS IT, MAGGIE, 
THE OLD HOME” 


What a joy tobeafather! 

What new emotions crowd 
the eye with tears, and make 
the hand tremble! What a 

J 

benevolence radiates from ' 
you toward the nurse, to ward 
the physician — toward 
everybody! What a h o 1 i - 
ness, and sanctity of love 

, i i THE OLD HOME" 

grows upon your old devo¬ 
tion to that wife of your bosom — the mother of your child! 

There was a time when you thought '' / * 

it very absurd for fathers to talk about 
theirchildren ; but it does not seem at 

all absurd now. You think, on the contrary, that your old 
friends, who used to sup with you at the club, would 
be delighted to know how your baby is gettingon, 
and how much he measures around the calf of the 
leg! If they pay you a visit, you are quite sure 
they are in an agony to see Frank; and you hold 
the little squirming fellow in your arms, half con¬ 
science-smitten for provoking them to such envy 
as they must be suffering. 





A NEW BETROTHAL 


The strength and pride of manhood are gone; 
the time of power is now past; your manliness has 
told its tale; henceforth your career is down ;—hitherto, you have journeyed up. 
You look back upon a decade, as you once looked upon a half-score of months; a 

n year has become to your slackened memory, and to your dull 
perceptions, like a week of childhood. Suddenly and swiftly 

__ come past you great whirlsof gone- 

1 by thought, and wrecks of vain 
j labor, eddying to the grave. 

The same old man is in his 
chamber; he cannot leave his 
\ chair now. The sun is shining 
brightly: still, the old man can¬ 
not see. 

“ It is getting dark, Maggie. “ 

) Madge looks at Nelly—wistful- 
i'ly—sadly. The old man murmurs 
^something; and Madge stoops. 

& “Coming, ’’ he says. “Coming. ” 




“IT IS GETTING DARK, MAGGIE 


r~ n 





















Drawn by Charles Dana Gibson. 

EUGENIE. 


540 









































































“ We make no choice among the varied paths where art and letters seek for truth.” 



\ 







THE ORIGIN OF A TYPE OF THE AMERICAN GIRL 

By Richard Harding Davis. 

With original illustrations by Charles Dana Gibson . 

As I know nothing of art, I must suppose that when I was 
\ asked to tell something of Charles Dana Gibson, it was as a man 
^ ' 'JL that I was expected to write of him, and not as an artist. As he 
is quite as much of a man as he is an artist, which is saying a 
| very great deal, I cannot complain of lack of subject-matter. But 

on the other hand, it is always much easier to write about an in¬ 
dividual one knows only by reputation than of a man one knows 
as a friend, because in the former place one goes to the 
celebrity for the facts, and he supplies them himself, and 
so has to take the responsibility of 
all that is said of him. But when you know a man intimately 
and as a friend, you tell of those things which you personally 
have found most interesting in him, and the responsibility of 
the point of view rests entirely on your own shoulders. 

The most important thing about Mr. 

Gibson, outside of his art, is his extreme 
youth. This is not only interesting in it¬ 
self, but because it promises to remain with 
him for such a very long time. When I first 
met Gibson he was twenty-four years old. 

That was in London, five years ago, and he 
is now “ twenty-five years old, going on 
twenty-four,” so that if he keeps on 
growing at that rate, he will still be 
the youngest successful black and 
white artist in this country for 
twenty years to come, as he will 
even then,in 1914 , have only 
reached his thirtieth year. Of 
course this may be an error of the 
newspaper paragraphers, or a mistake 
on the part of Gibson himself, who 

54* 


m 



A FOLLOWER OF THE HOUNDS. 




































542 


The Origin of a Type of the American Girl 


having been called the Boy Artist for 
so long dislikes to give up his crim¬ 
son sash and knickerbockers. But 
^ in any event, it is most demoralizing 
to his friends, as it has kept several 
of them to my certain knowledge at 
the age of twenty-eight for the last 
five years, none of them caring to 
grow older until Gibson was ready 
to make the first move. 

It is always interesting to tell of 
the early struggles of great men, but 
Gibson’s difficulties were not very 
severe, and were soon overcome. 
When he recounts them now, to 
show that he as well as others has 
had to toil for recognition, he leaves 
the impression with you that what 
troubled his spirit most in those days was not that his drawings were rejected, 
but that he had to climb so many flights of stairs to get them back. His work 
then was in the line of illustrated advertisements which no one wanted, and it 
was not until he knocked at the door of the office of Life that he met with a 
welcome and with encouragement. In return for this early recognition, Mr. 
Gibson has lately erected and presented to that periodical a very fine eleven-story 



CONFIDENCES. 



A t£tE X TETE. 































































543 


The Origin of a Type of the American Girl 

building, on the top floor of which he occupies a large and 
magnificent studio. He ascends to this in a gilded elevator, 
scorning the stairs on which he climbed to success. His first 
contribution to Life was a sketch of a dog barking at the 
moon, which was drawn during the run of the “ Mikado ” in 
New \ ork, and the picture was labelled after a very pop¬ 
ular song in that opera, called “ The Moon and I.” Mr. 

Mitchell looked at the picture of the absurd little fox-ter¬ 
rier barking at the round genial moon, and wrote out a 
check for four dollars for Mr. Gibson, while that young man 
sat anxiously outside in the hall with his hat between his 
knees. He then gave the check to Mr. Gibson, who re¬ 
sisted the temptation to look and see for how large an 
amount it might be, and asked him to let them have 
“ something else.” Mr. Gibson went down the stairs sev¬ 
eral steps at a time, without complaining of their number, 
and as he journeyed back to his home in Flushing he ar¬ 
gued it out in this way : “ If I can get four dollars for a 
silly little picture of a dog,” he said, “ how much more will 
I not receive for really humorous sketches of men and 
women. I can make six drawings as good as that in an 
evening, six times four is twenty-five dollars, and six 

sketches a day, not counting Sunday, 
will bring me in one hundred and 
twenty-five dollars a week. Fifty- 
two times one hundred and twen- 




ARGUMENT. 


AN AMERICAN GIRL. 


ty-five dollars is about seven thousand a year. My income 
is assured ! ” And in pursuance of this idea he actually 
sat down that night, under the lamp on the centre table, 
and drew six sketches, and the next morning took them 
to Mr. Mitchell, of Life , with a proud and confident bear¬ 
ing, and Mr. Mitchell sent them all out to him again, and 
said that perhaps he had better try once more. That he 
did try once more, is very well known to everybody in this 
country, and, since he exhibited in Paris last spring, to 
people on the other side of the water as well. Over there 
they gave him a whole wall to himself in the Salon of 
e Champ de Mars, and the French art critics were 
delighted and extravagant in their written “ appre¬ 
ciations.” But long before that exhibition of his 
work, the queer running signature of C.. D. Gib¬ 
son, with the little round circle over the i, had 
become significant and familiar. He had intro¬ 
duced us in those last few years to many types, and 
each possessed its own peculiar and particular virtue, 
but it was his type of the American girl which made an 
entire continent of American girls profoundly 
grateful. Gibson has always shown her as a 


































































544 



The Origin of a Type of the American Girl 

fine and tall young person, with a beautiful face and figure, and with 
the fearlessness on her brow and in her eyes that comes from in¬ 
nocence and from confidence in the innocence of others toward 
her. And countless young women, from New York and Bos¬ 
ton to Grand Rapids and Sioux City, have emulated her erect 
carriage and have held their head as she does, and have dis¬ 
carded bangs in order to look like her, and fashioned their 
gowns after hers. It is as though Gibson had set up a stand¬ 
ard of feminine beauty and sent it broadcast through the land 
by means of the magazines and 
periodicals, to N show his countrywomen of 
what they were capable, and of what was expected 
of them in consequence. But with all of this evi¬ 
dent admiration for the American woman Gibson 
is somewhat inconsistent. For he is constantly 
placing her in positions that make us fear she is 
a cynical and worldly-wise young person, and of a 
fickleness of heart that belies her looks. And 
rv the artist’s friends are constantly 
asked why he takes such a de- 
pressing view of matrimony, and 
why he thinks American girls are 

' G \ 

/ 




, always ready to sell themselves 
for titles, and if he is not 


a disappointed lover him¬ 
self, and in consequence a little 
morbid and a good deal of a 
cynic. To Mr. Gibson’s friends 
these questions are as amusing as his pictures of 
ruined lives and unhappy marriages are curious, 
for it is only in his pictures that he shows cyni¬ 
cism, and neither in his conversation nor his con¬ 
duct does he ever exhibit anything but a most 
healthy and boyish regard for life and all that it 
gives. 

It is quite safe to say that Gibson is not a dis¬ 
appointed lover, or if he is, he has concealed the 

fact very well, and it cannot 
be said that his conduct tow¬ 
ard the rest of womankind 
shows the least touch of re¬ 
sentment. As an artist, how¬ 
ever, he is frequently disap¬ 
pointing to strangers, because 
he does not live up to the 
part, or even trouble to dress it prop¬ 
erly. He does not affect a pointed 
beard or wear a velvet jacket, or talk 




LE NEZ PARISIEN* 





The Origin of a Type of the American Girl 


545 



PROBLEMS 


of art, either of his own 
art or of that of someone 
else, and in this I think he 
shows himself much older 
than his years. People 
Who talk to him of sub¬ 
jects which they suppose are in his line of work, are met by a polite look of in- 

_ quiry, and their observations are received with a look of 
the most earnest attention. 

But he lets the subject drop when they cease talking. 
Like all great men, Gibson apparently thinks much more 
of the things he does indifferently well than of the one 
thing for which he is best known. He is, for instance, 
very much better pleased when he is asked to sing “ Tom¬ 
my Atkins,” than when editors of magazines humbly supplicate for 
the entire output of his studio ; and if anyone should be so brave 
as to ask hirn to sing a sentimental song, his joy would know no 
bounds. His reputation as a sailor is another thing that he 
guards most jealously, and all of this last summer art editors 
telegraphed him for promised work until the wires burned, 
while the artist was racing in a small canoe around the rock- 
bound coast of Buzzards Bay. It is certainly a very healthy 

sign when a young man of “ twenty-five, going on twenty 
35 





































546 


The Origin of a Type of the American Girl 





IN THE PARK. 


four,” can return after a nine months’ residence in Paris, and con¬ 
tentedly spend his first month at home seated on the tilting edge of 
a canoe in a wet bathing suit, for ten hours a day. It is also a good 

if ^ 

sign, and one that goes to show that Gibson is far from being spoiled ; ^ 

that after having Sybil Sanderson sing and Loie Fuller dance in his 

Paris studio, before a polite circle of ambassadors 
and numerous pretenders to the throne of France, 

he can find equal entertainment in the lazy quiet 
°f a M assac hmsetts fishing village, and in drawing 
posters to advertise the local church fair. Now 
that he has given up his flannels and sweater, and 
returned to his work in New York, Mr. Gibson has 
developed a desire to pose as a Bohemian, which 
his friends who live in hall-bedrooms resent, as they 
consider a Bohemian with a grand piano, and tap¬ 
estries four hundred years old, something of a curi¬ 
osity and a fraud. 

At present Gibson is full of a plan to bring out 
a selected number of drawings in book form, that 
they may not be lost in the cov¬ 
ers of the magazines, and his in¬ 
terest in this book is as great as 
though he did not know that his pictures are already preserved 
in the memories of many thousands, and actually in scrap-books 
and on the walls of offices and cabins and drawing-rooms. I have 
seen them myself pinned up in as far distant and various places 
as the dressing-room of a theatre in Fort Worth, Tex., and in a 
students’ club at Oxford. But it will be a great book, and it will 

be dedicated to “A Little American Girl,” and only Mr. Gib¬ 
son’s friends will know that the picture of this sweet and in¬ 
nocent little maiden which will appear on the fly-leaf of the 
book is of his little sister. 

I fear this article does not give a very clear idea of its 
hero, and it would be certainly incomplete if I did not add 
that among Gib¬ 
son’s other wick¬ 
ed habits, is the 
serious one of never keeping engage¬ 
ments, and his friends are now trying 
to cure him by never asking him any¬ 
where. When he is older he may over¬ 
come even this, and in the meanwhile, I 
will ask those who have read this not to 
judge Mr. Gibson by what I have said 
so ineffectually of him, but by his work, 
and they will understand that the artist 
that is capable of producing it, must 
be a pretty good sort of a man himself. 





A world’s FAIR group. 















WII.LT am sit a k espea r e. 


I 











































OUR 

FAVORITE ENGLISH AUTHORS. 


William Shakespeare, the Greatest English Poet. 

John Milton, the Immortal Author of “ Paradise Lost.” 

Thomas Gray, Author of the Immortal Elegy. 

Robert Burns, Best Loved of Scottish Poets. 

George Gordon Byron, Poet of Scorn, Misanthropy and Despair. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poet, Philosopher, Critic and Theologian. 

Thomas Hood, Humorist and Poet. 

William Wordsworth, the Founder of the Lake School of Poetry. 

Alfred Tennyson, the First of Modern Poets. 

Dr. John Watson, “Ian Maclaren,” Author of “Beside the Bonny Briar Bush.” 
Sir Walter Scott, Poet, Novelist and Historian. 

Charles Dickens, the Greatest English Novelist. 

William Makepeace Thackeray, the Greatest Humorist and Novelist. 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Most Melodious of Poets among Women. 
Thomas Babington Macaulay, the Most Versatile Writer of the Century. 
George Eliot, the Greatest Woman Novelist of England. 

William Ewart Gladstone, the “Grand Old Man” of English Politics. 

















































. 



















































THE GREATEST ENGLISH POET. 


“ He was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All 
the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any- 
thing, )ou more than see it—you feel it, too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater 
commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and 
found her there. ”— Dry den. 

E know almost nothing of the details of the life of William Shake¬ 
speare. He was born at Stratford-on-Avon, perhaps on April 23, 
1564. The precise day of his birth is not fixed with certainty, but 
as he was baptized on April 26, the date traditionally assigned is 
at least approximately correct. The authenticated facts in the 
life of Shakespeare may be very briefly told. His father was an 
apparently well-to-do tradesman—a wool-comber or glover—but 
there is evidence that he fell into reduced circumstances while his son was yet a 
boy. William Shakespeare, the eldest son who survived childhood, was sent to the 
grammar school at Stratford, where, according to Ben Jonson, he acquired “small 
Latin and less Greek.” There is no evidence that he was ever able to read easily 
or to speak any language except his own. Tradition says that he was for a time an 
assistant in his father’s shop. But of the youth and early manhood of Shakespeare 
nothing is known, except that six months before he had entered upon his nineteenth 
year he was hastily married to Anne Hathaway, a woman some seven years his 
senior, whose home was at Shottery, a village near-by Stratford; and that within 
eighteen months, first a daughter, and then a boy and a girl, twins, were born 
to them. 

When about twenty-three Shakespeare left Stratford for London. Tradition 
says that this departure was somehow connected with his having been arrested for 
deerstealing in the park of Sir Thomas Lucy. He soon became connected with 
the Metropolitan theater. One tradition has it that he got his living for a while by 

549 






























WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 



550 

holding the horses of gentlemen at the door of the theater ; another has it that he 
was for a while stage-prompter. There is good reason to believe that these stories 
are entire fabrications ; for within less than half-a-dozen years we find incidental 
mention made of him, showing that he was already known as a man of parts, and 
of good social repute. His connection with the London theater could hardly have 
been a merely accidental one. The London players were wont to visit Stratford : 
Thomas Green, one of the best of them, was a native ol the town; and Richard 
Burbage, afterward the friend of Shakespeare, was from the same part of the 
country. We can not doubt that Shakespeare had become favorably known to 
them, and that he went up to London upon no uncertain adventure. At all events, 
it was not long before he was regularly installed as “playwright” to the company. 
A part of his duty was undoubtedly that of “touching up” the works of others; 


Ann Hathaway’s Cottage at Shottery. 

but it was not long before he began to produce original dramas. He also bore a 
part in the representation of his own plays ; the part of “the ghost” in Hamlet 
being especially mentioned as one of those which were enacted by him. That he 
throve in a pecuniary point of view is clear. As early as 1597, when he was thirty- 
three, we find him with money which he could afford to invest in landed property in 
his native place, and he retained, besides, large interests in the London theaters, from 
which he received a very ample income—estimated as equivalent to about five 
thousand dollars of our money now. Though he lived in familiar intercourse with 
the nobles, the wits, and the poets of his day, he looked forward to the time when 
he should retire to his native town, and with this view he purchased New Place, 
the principal house in Stratford, with more than a hundred acres of ground 
attached. “The year 1612 has been assigned as the date of his final retirement 



























WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


551 


to the country. In the fulness of his fame, with a handsome competency, and 
before age had chilled the enjoyment of life, the poet returned to his native town 
to spend the remainder of his days among the quiet scenes and the friends of his 

youth, hour years were spent by Shakespeare in this dignified retirement, and 
the history of literature scarce¬ 
ly presents another such pic¬ 
ture of calm felicity and satis¬ 
fied ambition. ” 

H e was evidently a shrewd 
man of business, farming his 
own lands, disposing of their 
product, and looking to it that 
the purchasers paid what they 
owed ; for in 1604 we find him 
bringing action against one 
Philip Rogers for about forty- 
five dollars for “ malt sold and 
delivered to him.” 

He died somewhat sud¬ 
denly, in 1616, of a fever, 
and was buried in the parish 
church,where a contemporary 
bust of him still exists, which 
must be regarded as the best- 
authenticated likeness of the 
poet. His wife survived him 
seven years. His only son, 

Ham net, died at the age of 
twelve; his two daughters, 

Susanna and Judith, both 
married, and one of them had 
three sons, but they all died 
without issue, so that a quar¬ 
ter of a century after his death 
there was no living descendant 
of Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare must early 
have won a high place in the 
esteem of the most accom¬ 
plished noblemen of Queen 
Elizabeth’s court, for as early 
as 1594 he dedicated his 

poem, the “Rape of Lucrece,” to the Earl of Southampton, in terms which 
demonstrate the existence of mutual respect of a high degree between the author 
and his patron. It is said that Southampton once presented Shakespeare with a 
sum of money equivalent to twenty-five thousand dollars in our day, but of this 



Actor and Author. 

David Garrick and the Bust of Shakespeare. 


















WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


there is no conclusive evidence. It is certain, however, that the noble earl was 
glad to serve the popular writer and player, and that he was the means of procur¬ 
ing for “William Kempe, William Shakespeare, and Richarde Burbage, servauntes 
to the Lord Chamberleyne,” an invitation to present before the Court “ twoe 
severall comedies or enterludes,” for which they received twenty pounds. 

That Shakespeare had written more or less before he went up to London is 
altogether probable; that “ Venus and Adonis ” was “the first fruits of his inven¬ 
tion ” in any other sense than that of being the first to be printed, is not probable. 
That he was certainly employed as playwright or adapter of dramas for the stage 
before this time is unquestionable, and it is most likely that as a poet he had 
attracted the notice of the author of the “ Faerie Queene,” who was his senior by 

eleven years. 

The productive literary 
life of Shakespeare, as far as 
we can date it, covers the 
twenty years preceding 1612, 
when at the age of forty-eight 
he retired to his native Strat¬ 
ford-on-Avon, after which we 
have no proof that he wrote 
anything. 

Shakespeare’s dramas, ac¬ 
cording to the all but uni¬ 
versally accepted canon, num¬ 
ber thirty-seven. There is no 
good reason to suppose that 
any of his plays have been 
lost, or that he had any con¬ 
siderable share in the compo¬ 
sition of any others. He un¬ 
doubtedly availed himself 
somewhat of the works of 
earlier playwrights, and in his 
historical plays made large use 
of the chroniclers, from whom he took not merely the historical outlines, but page 
after page of their very words, only throwing into dramatic form the continuous 
narrative of his authorities. Scene after scene in “Macbeth” is to be found in 
the “ Chronicles ” of Holinshed, themselves a translation from the Latin of Hector 
Boece, which had been published only a few years ; and some of the most dramatic 
scenes in “Richard III.” are reproductions from “The Union of the Two Noble 
and Illustr Families of Lancastre and Yorke,” by Edward Hall. 

The dates of the production of the dramas are mainly conjectural ; although 
it is pretty well settled that “ Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” was one of the earliest, 
and “The Tempest” one of the latest; that “Romeo and Juliet” was an early 
play and “ Cymbeline ” a late one. Twelve plays at least, and doubtless several 
more, had been produced before Shakespeare reached his thirty-fourth year. His 


Fountain and Clock Tower Erected by Geo. W. Childs at 

Stratford-on-Avon. 












WILLIAM bHAKESPEARE. 


553 


greatest works are of later date. “Hamlet” was certainly produced as early as 
1604, and “ Macbeth” previous to 1610. 

About a dozen of the plays of Shakespeare seem to have been printed during 
his lifetime, probably not by his procurement. The entire plays were first put 
forth in a folio volume in 1623, seven years after his death. It has a preface and 
dedication by his fellow-players, Heminge and Condell, and was undoubtedly 
printed from the stage copies, which could hardly have failed to have been sanc¬ 
tioned by Shakespeare. 

Aside from his dramas, Shakespeare would rank with Spenser and Milton as an 
imaginative poet. His one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, some of which were 
probably among his earliest productions, are sometimes imagined to express his 
deepest personal feelings, and to reveal, in great measure, the story of his life ; but 
as Shakespeare wrote to please his reader, and with very little apparent thought of 
himself, such conclusions must be accepted with great caution. The wonderful 
dramas so far surpass his other poems tiiat the latter are now but little read. 

Shakespeare’s actual observation of the world was probably limited to the 
territory within a distance of fifty miles from the highway, itself a hundred miles 
in length, which leads from Stratford to London ; but by some marvel of endow¬ 
ment he was enabled to touch the mind and heart of men of every land and 
every generation, and it has been well said that no poet has ever written on any 
topic but it can be found better done in Shakespeare. 



MERCY. 


“Merchant of Venice/’ Act IV, , Scene 2 . 


HE quality of mercy is not strained; 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath : it is twice 
blessed; 

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 

Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown ; 

His scepter shows the force of temporal power, 
The attribute to awe and majesty, 

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; 



But mercy is above this sceptered sway; 

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 

It is an attribute to God himself; 

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s 
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this— 

That, in the course of justice, none of us 
Should see salvation : we do pray for mercy; 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy. 


-•O'C-O*- 

SONNET XCIX. 


The forward violet thus did I chide ;— 

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that 
smells, 

If not from my love’s breath ? The purple pride 
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells, 
In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dyed. 

The lily I condemned for thy hand, 

And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair : 


The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, 

One blushing shame, another white despair; 

A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both, 
And to his robbery had annexed thy breath; 
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth 
A vengeful canker eat him up to death. 

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, 
But sweet or color it had stolen from thee. 
















554 


WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


THE ABUSE OF AUTHORITY. 

“Measure for Measure,” Act //, Scene 2. 


O, it is excellent 

To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous 
To use it like a giant. 

Could great men thunder 
As Tove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet; 
For every pelting, petty officer 
Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but 
thunder. 


Merciful Heaven ! 

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt, 
Splitt’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak 
Than the soft myrtle: But man, proud man, 
Dressed in a little brief authority, 

Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,— 

His glassy essence,—like an angry ape, 

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven 
As make the angels weep: who, with our spleens. 
Would all themselves laugh mortal. 







Shakespeare’s House, Stratford-on-Avon. 


THE WITCHES. 


“Macbeth,” Act IV, Scene 1. 


A dark cave. In the middle, a caldron boiling. Thunder. 


Enter the three Witches. 

1st Witch. Thrice the brinded cat has mewed. 
2d Witch. Thrice; and once the hedge-pig 
whined. 

jd Witch. Harpier cries:—’Tis time, ’tistime. 
1st Witch. Round about the caldron go; 

In the poisoned entrails throw. 

Toad, that under the cold stone, 

Days and nights hast thirty-one 
Sweltered venom sleeping got, 

Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot! 


All. Double, double, toil and trouble; 
Fire burn, and caldron bubble. 

2d Witch . Fillet of a fenny snake, 

In the caldron boil and bake: 

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, 

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, 

Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, 
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing, 

For a charm of powerful trouble ; 

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. 

All. Double, double, toil and trouble ; 
Fire burn, and caldron bubble. 























WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


555 


DEATH OF QUEEN KATHERINE. 


“Henry VIII,” 

Kath. Sir, I most humbly pray you to deliver 
This to my lord the King. 

Cap- Most willing, madam. 

Kath. In which I have commended to his 
goodness 

The model of our chaste loves, his young daugh¬ 
ter : 

The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on 
her! — 

Beseeching him to give her virtuous breeding; 
(She is young, and of a noble, modest nature; 

I hope she will deserve well;) and a little 
To love her for her mother’s sake, that loved him, 
Heaven knows how dearly. My next poor petition 
Is, that his noble grace would have some pity 
Upon my wretched women, that so long 
Have followed both my fortunes faithfully: 

Of which there is not one, I dare avow, 

(And now I should not lie,) but will deserve, 

For virtue, and true beauty of the soul, 

For honesty, and decent carriage, 

A right good husband, let him be a noble; 

And, sure, those men are happy that shall have 
them. 

The last is, for my men ;—they are the poorest, 
But poverty could never draw them from me;— 
That they may have their wages duly paid them, 


Act IV, Scene 4. 

And something over to remember me by; 

If heaven had pleased to have given me longer life, 
And able means, we had not parted thus. 

These are the whole contents:—And, good my 
lord, 

By that you love the dearest in this world, 

As you wish Christian peace to souls departed, 
Stand these poor people’s friend, and urge the king 
To do me this last right. 

Cap. By heaven, I will; 

Or let me lose the fashion of a man ! 

Kath. I thank you, honest lord. Remember me 
In all humility unto his highness: 

Say, his long trouble now is passing 
Out of this world : tell him, in death I blessed 
him, 

For so I will.—Mine eyes grow dim.—Farewell, 
My lord.—Griffith, farewell.—Nay, Patience, 

You must not leave me yet. I must to bed; 

Call in more women.—When I am dead, good 
wench, 

Let me be used with honor; strew me over 
With maiden flowers, that all the world may know 
I was a chaste wife to my grave: embalm me, 
Then lay me forth : although unqueened, yet like 
A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me. 

I can no more. 


-»o^o*- 

THE POWER OF IMAGINATION. 


“A Midsummer Night’s 
I never may believe 

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. 

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, 
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend 
More than cool reason ever comprehends. 

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 

Are of imagination all compact: 

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold— 
That is the madman : the lover, all as frantic, 

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: 

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 


Dream,” Act V , Scene 1 . 

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 
heaven, 

And, as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name. 

Such tricks hath strong imagination, 

That, if it would but apprehend some joy, 

It comprehends some bringer of that joy; 

Or, in the night, imagining some fear, 

How easy is a bush supposed a bear! 


-- 

THE FAIRY TO PUCK. 
“Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Act II, Scene 1. 


Over hill, over dale, 

Thorough bush, thorough brier, 
Over park, over pale, 

Thorough flood, thorough fire, 

I do wander everywhere, 

Swifter than the moon’s sphere; 
As I serve the fairy queen, 


To dew her orbs upon the green : 

The cowslips tall her pensioners be; 
In their gold coats spots you see; 
Those be rubies, fairy favors, 

In those freckles live their savors; 

I must go seek some dew-drops here, 
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear. 







55 6 


WILLIAM bllAKEbPEARE. 



ARIEL’S SONG. 


“The Tempest,” Act 

Where the bee sucks, there suck I; 

In a cowslip’s bell I lie : 

There I couch when owls do cry, 

On the bat’s back I do fly 

-»o<>o«- 


V t Scene /. 

After summer merrily: 

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, 

Under the blossom that hangs on the 
bough. 


OBERON’S VISION. 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Act II, Scene 2. 


Obe. My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou re¬ 
member’ st 

Since once I sat upon a promontory, 

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin’s back, 
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 

That the rude sea grew civil at her song; 

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, 
To hear the sea-maid’s music. 

Puck. I remember. 

Obe. That very time I saw (but thou couldst 
not), 

Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
Cupid all armed ; a certain aim he took 
At a fair vestal, throned by the west; 

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his 
bow, 

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: 
But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft 


Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery 
moon; 

And the imperial votaress passed on, 

In maiden meditation, fancy-free. 

Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell: 

It fell upon a little western flower,— 

Before, milk-white; now, purple with love’s 
wound; 

And maidens call it love-in-idleness. 

Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee 

once ; 

The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, 

Will make or man or woman madly dote * 

Upon the next live creature that it sees. 

Fetch me this herb: and be thou here again, 

Ere the leviathan can swim a league. 

Puck. I’ll put a girdle round about the earth 
In forty minutes. 









WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


557 


FALL OF CARDINAL WOLSEY. 


“Henry VIII,” Act III , Scene 2. 


Cardinal 
Cromwell: 


Wolsey, after his fall from the favor of Henry VIII, thus soliloquizes, and afterward confers with his servant 


Wolsey. Farewell, a long farewell, to. all my 
greatness! 

This is the state of man ; to-day he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hope ; to-morrow blossoms, 
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him: 
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; 

And,—when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 
His greatness is a ripening,—nips his root, 

And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, 

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 
This many summers in a sea of glory; 

But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride 
At length broke under me; and now has left me, 
Weary, and old with service, to the mercy 
Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me. 

Vain pomp, and glory of this world, I hate ye; 

I feel my heart new open’d : O, how wretched 
Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors! 
There is, betwixt that smile he would aspire to, 
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, 
More pangs and fears than wars or women have ; 
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, 

Never to hope again.— 

Enter Cromwell, amazedly. 

Why, how now, Cromwell? 

Croni . I have no power to speak, sir. 

Wol. What, amazed at my misfortunes; can thy 
spirit wonder 

A great man should decline ? Nay, and you weep, 
I am fallen indeed. 

Crom. How does your grace? 

Wol. Why, well; 

Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell. 

I know myself now; and I feel within me 
A peace above all earthly dignities, 

A still and quiet conscience. The king has cured 
me, 

I humbly thank his grace; and from these shoul¬ 
ders, 

These ruin’d pillars, out of pity, taken 
A load would sink a navy, too much honor: 

O ’tis a burden, Cromwell, ’tis a burden, 

Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven. 

Crom. I am glad your grace has made that 
right use of it. 

Wol. I hope I have ; I am able now, methinks 
(Out of a fortitude of soul I feel), 

To endure more miseries, and greater far, 

Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer. 

What news abroad ? 


Crom. That Cranmer is return’d with welcome. 
Install’d lord archbishop of Canterbury. 

Wol. That’s news indeed. 

Crom. Last, that the Lady Anne, 

Whom the king hath in secrecy long married, 
This day was view’d in open, as his queen, 

Going to chapel; and the voice is now 
Only about her coronation. 

Wol. There was the weight that pull’d me 
down. O Cromwell, 

The king has gone beyond me ; all my glories 
In that one woman I have lost forever : 

No sun shall ever usher forth mine honors, 

Or gild again the noble troops that waited 
Upon my smiles. Go, get thee from me, Crom¬ 
well ; 

I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now 
To be thy lord and master: Seek the king ; 

That sun I pray may never set ! I have told him 
What, and how true thou art; he will advance 
thee ; 

Some little memory of me will stir him, 

(I know his noble nature) not to let 
Thy hopeful service perish, too : Good Cromwell, 
Neglect him not; make use now, and provide 
For thine own future safety. 

Cro 7 n. O my lord, 

Must I then leave you ? Must I needs forego 
So good, so noble, and so true a master? 

Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron, 
With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord.— 
The king shall have my service ; but my prayers 
Forever, and forever, shall be yours. 

Wol. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear 
In all my miseries ; but thou hast forced me, 

Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman. 

Let’s dry our eyes; and thus far hear me, 
Cromwell; 

And,—when I am forgotten, as I shall be, 

And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention 
Of me more must be heard of,—say, I taught 
thee; 

Say, Wolsey,—that once trod the ways of glory, 
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor,— 
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in ; 

A sure and safe one, though thy master miss’d it. 
Mark but my fall, and that that ruin’d me. 
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition ; 

By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, 
The image of his Maker, hope to win by’t? 

Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate 
thee; 




553 


WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


Corruption wins not more than honesty. 

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, 

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not: 
Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, 
Thy God’s, and truth’s; then if thou fall’st, 
O Cromwell, 

Thou fall’st a blessed martyr. Serve the king, 
And,-Pr’ythee, lead me in : 


There take an inventory of all I have, 

To the last penny; ’tis the king’s : my robe, 

And my integrity to heaven, is all 
I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, 
Cromwell, 

Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I served my king, he would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies. 



“Come Apace, Good Audrey: 1 Will Fetch Up Your Goats, Audrey.” 


TOUCHSTONE AND AUDREY. 
“As You Like It,” Ad Illy Scene j . 


Touch. Come apace, good Audrey : I will fetch 
up your goats, Audrey. And how, Audrey? am 
I the man yet? doth my simple feature content 
you ? 

Aud. Your features! Lord warrant us! what 
features ? 

Touch. I am here with thee and thy goats, as 
the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among 
the Goths. 

When a man’s verses can not be understood, 


nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward 
child Understanding, it strikes a man more dead 
than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I 
would the gods had made thee poetical. 

Aud. I do not know what “ poetical ” is; is it 
honest in deed and word? is it a true thing? 

Touch. No, truly; for the truest poetry is the 
most feigning; and lovers are given to poetry, 
and what they swear in poetry may be. said as 
lovers they do feign. 

























WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


559 


•Aud. Do you wish, then, that the gods had 
made me poetical ? 

Touch. I do, truly; for thou swearest to me 
thou art honest; now, if thou wert a poet, I 
might have some hope thou didst feign. 

Aud. Would you not have me honest ? 

T?uch. No, truly, unless thou wert hard- 
favored ; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have 
honey a sauce to sugar. 


Aud ’. Well, I am not fair; and therefore I pray 
the gods make me honest. 

Touch. Well, praised be the gods. But be it 
as it may be, I will marry thee, and to that end I 
have been with Sir Oliver Martext, the vicar of 
the next village, who hath promised to meet me 
in this place of the forest and to couple us. 

Aud. Well, the gods give us joy ! 


THE SEVEN AGES. 


“As You Like It, 

The banished duke, with Jaques and other lords, are in 
who has been wandering in the forest in quest of food for 
comes upon the party, and with his sword drawn, exclaims: 

Orlando. Forbear, I say; 

He dies that touches any of this fruit 
Till I and my affairs are answer’d. 

Jaques. An you will not 
Be answer’d with reason, I must die. 

Duke Sen. What would you have? Your gen¬ 
tleness shall force, 

More than your force move us to gentleness. 

Orla. I almost die for food, and let me have it. 
Duke Sen. Sit down and feed, and welcome to 
our table. 

Orla. Speak you so gently ? Pardon me, I pray 
you; 

I thought that all things had been savage here; 

And therefore put I on the countenance 
Of stern commandment. But whate’er you are, 
That in this desert inaccessible, 

Under the shade of melancholy boughs, 

Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time ; 

If ever you have look’d on better days; 

If ever been where bells have knoll’d to church; 

If ever sat at any good man’s feast; 

If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear, 

And know what ’tis to pity, and be pitied; 

Let gentleness my strong enforcement be: 

In the which hope, I blush, and hide my sword. 
Duke Sen. True it is that we have seen better 
days; 

And have with holy bell been knoll’d to church ; 
And sat at good men’s feasts; and wiped our eyes 
Of drops that sacred pity hath engender’d : 

And therefore sit you down in gentleness, 

And take upon command what help we have 
That to your wanting may be minister’d. 

Orla. Then but forbear your food a little while, 
Whiles, like a doe, I go to find my fawn, 

And give it food. There is an old poor man, 

Who after me hath many a weary step 
Limp’d in pure love; till he be first sufficed,— 


’ Act II, Scene q. 

the forest of Arden, sitting at their plain repast. Orlando, 
an old. servant, Adam, who can “go no further,” suddenly 

Oppress’d with two weak evils, age and hunger,— 
I will not touch a bit. 

Duke Sen. Go find him out, 

And we will nothing waste till your return. 

Orla. I thank ye : and be bless’d for your good 
comfort. [Dxit.] 

Duke Sen. Thou seest, we are not all alone 
unhappy: 

This wide and universal theater 

Presents more woful pageants than the scene 

Wherein we play in. 

Jaq. All the world’s a stage, 

And all the men and women merely players: 

They have their exits and their entrances ; 

And one man in his time plays many parts, 

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, 
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms: 

And then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel 
And shining morning-face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school: And then the lover; 
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad 
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow : Then, a soldier; 
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, 
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, 
Seeking the bubble reputation 
Even in the cannon’s mouth : And then, the justice; 
In fair round belly, with good capon lined, 

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, 

Full of wise saws and modern instances, 

And so he plays his part: The sixth age shifts 
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon; 

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side : 

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide 
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, 
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 
And whistles in his sound : Last scene of all, 
That ends this strange eventful history, 

Is second childishness, and mere oblivion : 

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 







560 


WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 



“ i here is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook.” 


OPHELIA. 


“ Hamlet,” 

S PHERE is a willow grows aslant a brook, 

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy 
- stream; 

There with fantastic garlands did she come 
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples 
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 

But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them; 
There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds 
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; 
When down her weedy trophies and herself 


Act IV,\ Scene 7. 

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread 
wide; 

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up ; 
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, 

As one incapable of her own distress, 

Or like a creature native and indued 
Unto that element; but long it could not be 
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, 
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay 
To muddy death. 


- 


MACBETH’S IRRESOLUTION BEFORE THE MURDER OF DUNCAN. 

“ Macbeth,” Act 7 , Scene 7. 


Macb. If it were done, when ’tis done, then 
’twere well 

It were done quickly: If the assassination 
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, 
With his surcease, success ; that but this blow 
Might be the be-all and the end-all, here, 

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 

We’d jump the life to come.—But in these cases, 
We still have judgment here; that we but teach 
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
To plague the inventor : This even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice 
To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: 
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, 

Strong both against the deed: then, as his host, 


Who should against his murtherer shut the door, 
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan 
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking-off: 

And pity, like a naked new-born babe, 

Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed 
Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 

That tears shall drown the wind.—I have no 
spur 

To prick the sides of my intent, but only 
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, 

And falls on the other. * 

































M/L TOM 




1 . ■■■'• - . 


THE GREAT POETS OF ENGLAND 


■ .. ....■— .. 


-... • 


-» ■■■■ • • -s' • ••.<• »-V 









































WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


5^1 


ANTONY’S ORATION AT CAESAR’S FUNERAL. 

“Julius Cesar,” Act III , Scene 2. 


RIENDS, Romans, countrymen, lend me 
your ears; 

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. 
The evil that men do lives after them, 

The good is oft interred with their bones; 

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus 
Hath told you, Caesar was ambitious: 

If it were so, it was a grievous fault, 

And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. 

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest 
(For Brutus is an honorable man, 

So are they all, all honorable men), 

Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. 

He was my friend, faithful and just to me: 

But Brutus says, he was ambitious; 

And Brutus is an honorable man. 

He hath brought many captives home to Rome, 
Whose ransom did the general coffers fill: 

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? 

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: 
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. 

Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious; 

And Brutus is an honorable man. 

You all did see, that on the Lupercal 
I thrice presented him a kingly crown, 

Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition ? 
Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious; 

And, sure, he is an honorable man. 

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, 

But here I am to speak what I do know. 

You all did love him once, not without cause; 
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him? 
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, 

And men have lost their reason !—Bear with me; 
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, 

And I must pause till it come back to me. 

• ••••••• 

But yesterday the word of Caesar might 

Have stood against the world : now lies he there, 

And none so poor to do him reverence. 

O masters ! if I were dispos’d to stir 
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, 

1 should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, 
Who, you all know, are honorable men : 

I will not do them wrong; I rather choose 
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you, 
Than I will wrong such honorable men. 

But here’s a parchment, with the seal of Caesar ; 

I found it in his closet; ’tis his will: 

You will compel me, then, to read the will? 

Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar, 

And let me show you him that made the will. 


If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. 

You all do know this mantle: I remember 
The first time ever Caesar put it on ; 

’Twas on a summer’s evening, in his tent, 

That day he overcame the Nervii. 

Look! in this place, ran Cassius’ dagger through* 
See what a rent the envious Casca made: 

Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb’d ; 
And, as he pluck’d his cursed steel away, 

Mark how the blood of Caesar follow’d it, 

As rushing out of doors, to be resolv’d 
If Brutus so unkindly knock’d, or no ; 

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel r 
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar lov’d him! 
This was the most unkindest cut of all; 

For, when the noble Caesar saw him stab, 
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms, 

Quite vanquish’d him: then burst his mighty 
heart; 

And, in his mantle muffling up his face, 

Even at the base of Pompey’s statue, 

Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell. 
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! 

Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, 

Whilst bloody treason flourish’d over us. 

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel 
The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. 

Kind souls, what! weep you, when you but behold 
Our Caesar’s vesture wounded? Look you here, 

Here is himself, marr’d, as you see, with traitors. 

• ••••••• 

Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up 
To such a sudden flood of mutiny. 

They that have done this deed are honorable : 
What private griefs they have, alas! I know not, 
That made them do it; they are wise and honor¬ 
able, 

And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. 

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: 

I am no orator, as Brutus is; 

But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, 

That love my friend ; and that they know full well 
That gave me public leave to speak of him. 

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, 
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, 
To stir men’s blood : I only speak right on ; 

I tell you that which you yourselves do know, 
Show you sweet Caesar’s wounds, poor, poor dumb 
mouths, 

And bid them speak for me: but, were I Brutus, 
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony 
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue 
In every wound of Caesar, that should move 
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny. 



36 






562 


WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


SHYLOCK AND ANTONIO. 

“ Merchant of Venice,” Act I, Scene 3. 


Antonio, to oblige his friend Bassanio, becomes his surety 

Bassanio. This is Signior Antonio. 

Shylock {aside). How like a fawning publican 
he looks! 

I hate him for he is a Christian ; 

But more for that in low simplicity 
He lends out money gratis and brings down 
The rate of usance here with us in Venice. 

If I can catch him once upon the hip, 

I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. 

He hates our sacred nation, and he rails, 

Even there where merchants most do congregate, 
On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift, 
Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe, 

If I forgive him. 

Antonio. Shylock, although I neither lend nor 
borrow 

By taking nor by giving of excess, 

Yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend, 

I’ll break a custom. 

Shy. Methought you said you neither lend nor 
borrow 

Upon advantage. 

Ant. I do never use it. 

Shy. When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban’s 
sheep— 

Ant. And what of him ? did he take interest ? 
Shy. No, not take interest, not, as you would 
say,. 

Directly interest: mark what Jacob did. 

This was a way to thrive, and he was blest: 

And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not. 

A?it. Mark you this, Bassanio, 

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. 

An evil soul producing holy witness 
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, 

A goodly apple rotten at the heart. 

Shy. Signior Antonio, many time and oft 
In the Rialto you have rated me 
About my money and my usances: 

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, 

For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. 

You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 

And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, 

And all for use of that which is mine own. 

Well then, it now appears you need my help : 

Go too, then ; you come to me and you say, 

“ Shylock, we would have moneys: ” you say so ; 
You that did void your rheum upon my beard, 

And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur 
Over your threshold : moneys is your suit. 

What should I say to you ? Should I not say, 

“ Hath a dog money ? is it possible 
A cur can lend three thousand ducats? ” or 


for repayment of a loan. 

Shall I bend low, and in a bondman’s key, 

Say this: “Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednes¬ 
day last; 

You spurned me such a day; another time 
You called me dog ; and for these courtesies 
I’ll lend you thus much moneys? ” 

Ant. I am as like to call thee so again, 

To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. 

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not 
As to thy friends; for when did friendship take 
A breed for barren metal of his friend ? 

But lend it rather to thine enemy. 

Who, if he break, thou mayest with better face 
Exact the penalty. 

Shy. Why, look you, how you storm ! 

I would be friends with you and have your love, 
Forget the shames that you have stain’d me 
with, 

Supply your present wants and take no doit 
Of usance for my moneys, and you’ll not hear 
me: 

This is kind I offer. 

Bass. This were kindness. 

Shy. This kindness will I show. 

Go with me to a notary, seal me there 
Your single bond ; and in a merry sport, 

If you repay me not on such a day, 

In such a place, such sum or sums as are 
Express’d in such condition, let the forfeit 
Be nominated for an equal pound 
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken 
In what part of your body pleaseth me. 

Ant. Content i’ faith : I’ll seal to such a bond. 
And say there is much kindness in the Jew. 

Bass. You shall not sign to such a bond for 
me. 

I’ll rather dwell in my necessity. 

Ant. Why, fear not, man ; I will not forfeit it: 
Within these two months—that’s a month before 
This bond expires—I do expect return 
Of thrice three times the value of this bond. 

Shy. O father Abram, w T hat these Christians 
are, 

Whose own hard dealing teaches them suspect 
The thoughts of others ! Pray you, tell me this ? 
If he should break his day, what slould I gain? 

A pound of man’s flesh taken from a man 
Is not so estimable, profitable neither, 

As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. I say 
To buy his favor, I extend this friendship : 

If he will take it, so ; if not, adieu : 

And, for my love, I pray you wrong me not. 

Ant. Yes, Shylock, I will seal unto this bond. 




WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


5 6 3 


Shy. Then meet me henceforth at the notary’s; 
Give him directions for this money bond, 

And I will go and purse the ducats straight; 

See to my house, left in the fearful guard 


Of an unthrifty knave, and presently 
I will be with you. [Exit.] 

Ant. Hie thee, gentle Jew. 

The Hebrew will turn Christian : he grows kind. 




HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH. 

“ Hamlet,” Act III , Scene i. 


Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question : 
Whether ’ tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 

And by opposing end them ? To die,—to sleep,— 
No more ; and, by a sleep, to say we end 
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to,—’tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished. To die,—to sleep ;— 

To sleep! perchance to dream;—ay, there’s the 
rub; 

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 

Must give us pause : there’s the respect, 

That makes calamity of so long life : 

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s con¬ 
tumely, 


The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay, 

The insolence of office, and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 

When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin ? Who would these fardels 
bear, 

To grunt and sweat under a weary life ; 

But that the dread of something after death, 

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
No traveler returns, puzzles the will; 

And makes us rather bear those ills we have, 

Than fly to others that we know not of? 

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; 
And thus the native hue of resolution 
Is sickbed o’er with the pale cast of thought; 
And enterprises of great pith and moment, 

With this regard, their currents turn awry, 

And lose the name of action. 


••o£>o.-- 


HAMLET AND THE GHOST. 

“Hamlet,” Act /, Scene 4. 


Enter Ghost. 

Hor. Look, my lord, it comes ! 

Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend 
, us !— 

Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned, 
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from 
hell. 

Be thy intents wicked, or charitable, 

Thou comest in such a questionable shape, 

That I will speak to thee ; I’ll call thee, Hamlet, 
King, father, royal Dane : O, answer me : 

Let me not burst in ignorance ! but tell, 

Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, 
Have burst their cerements ! why the sepulchre, 
Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urned, 

Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, 

To cast thee up again ! What may this mean, 
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel, 
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon, 

Making night hideous ; and we fools of nature, 
So horridly to shake our disposition, 


With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? 
Say, why is this ? wherefore ? what should we 
do ? 

Hor. It beckons you to go away with it, 

As if it some impart me,it did desire 
To you alone. 

Mar. Look, with what courteous action 
It wafts you to a more removed ground : 

But do not go with it. 

Hor. No, by no means. 

Ham. It will not speak ; then will I follow it. 
Hor. Do not, my lord. 

Ham. It wafts me still: — 

Go on, I’ll follow thee. 

Where wilt thou lead me? speak, I’ll go no 
further. 

Ghost. Mark me. 

Ham. I will. 

Ghost. My hour is almost come, 

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames 
Must render up myself. 

Ham. Alas, poor ghost ! 






5 6 4 


WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hear¬ 
ing 

To what I shall unfold 

Ham. Speak, I am bound to hear. 

Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt 
hear. 

Ham. What ? 

Ghost. I am thy father’s spirit; 

Doomed for a certain term to walk the night ; 
And, for the day, confined to fast in fires, 

Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, 
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid 
To tell the secrets of my prison-house, 

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word 


Would harrow up thy soul; freeze th) young 
blood ; 

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their 
spheres; 

Thy knotted and combined locks to part, 

And each particular hair to stand on end, 

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine ; 

But this eternal blazon must not be 

To ears of flesh and blood :—List, Hamlet, O 
list!— 

If thou didst ever thy dear father love,— 

Ham. O heaven ! 

Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural 
murther. 



m %m 


.* AS P- AJ 


“ I spake of most disastrous chances, 

Of moving accidents by flood and field.” 


OTHELLO’S 

OST potent, grave, and reverend signeurs, 
My very noble and approved good masters, 
That I have ta’en away this old man’s 
daughter, 

It is most true ; true, I have married her : 

The very head and front of my offending 


WOOING. 

Hath this extent; no more. Rude am I in my 
speech, 

And little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace: 
For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith, 
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used 
Their dearest action in the tented field, 


































WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 



And little of this great world can I speak, 

More than pertains to feats of broil and battle, 
And therefore little shall I grace my cause 
In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious 
patience, 

I will a round unvarnish’d tale deliver 
Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what 
charms, 

What conjuration and what mighty magic, 

For such proceeding I am charged withal, 

I won his daughter. 

Bra. A maiden never bold ; 

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion 
Blush’d at herself; and she, in spite of nature, 

Of years, of country, credit, everything, 

To fall in love with what she fear’d to look 
on ! 

It is a judgment maim’d and most imperfect 
That will confess perfection so could err 
Against all rules of nature, and must be driven 
To find out practices of cunning hell, 

Why this should be. I therefore vouch again 
That with some mixtures powerful o’er the blood, 
Or with some dram conjured to this effect, 

He wrought upon her. 

Duke. To vouch this, is no proof, 

Without more wider or more overt test 
Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods 
Of modern seeming do prefer against him. 

First Sen. But, Othello, speak ; 

Did you by indirect and forced courses 
Subdue and poison this young maid’s affections ? 
Or came it by request and such fair question 
As soul to soul affordeth ? 

Duke. Say it, Othello. 

Othello. Her father lov’d me ; oft invited me ; 
Still question’d me the story of my life, 

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes, 
That I have pass’d. 

I ran it through, even from my boyish days, 

To the very moment that he bade me tell it: 


Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, 

Of moving accidents by flood and field ; 

Ol hair-breadth ’scapes i’ the imminent deadly 
breach; 

Of being taken by the insolent foe, 

And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, 
And importance in my travel’s history: 

Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle, 

Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch 
heaven, 

It was my hint to speak,—such was the process; 
And of the Cannibals that each other eat, 

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear 
Would Desdemona seriously incline, 

But still the house-affairs would draw her thence: 
Which ever as she could with haste despatch, 

She’Id come again, and with a greedy ear 
Devour up my discourse : which I observing, 
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means 
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart 
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, 

Whereof by parcels she had something heard, 

But not intentively: I did consent, 

And often did beguile her of her tears, 

When I did speak of some distressful stroke 
That my youth suffer’d. My story being done, 
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: 

She swore,—it faith, ’t was strange, ’t was passing 
strange; 

’T was pitiful, ’t was wondrous pitiful: 

She wish’d she had not heard it; yet she wish’d 
That Heaven had made her such a man: she 
thank’d me; 

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, 

I should but teach him how to tell my story, 

And that would woo her. Upon this hint I 
spake; 

She loved me for the dangers I had passed, 

And I loved her that she did pity them. 

This only is the witchcraft I have used. 




'®/a\Wa\\W/; vSSfev 


mz^yWm£ 

Mmmi 





HrJi 




JOHN MILTON. 

THE IMMORTAL AUTHOR OF “PARADISE LOST.” 

AR above all the poets of his own age, and, in learning, inven¬ 
tion, and sublimity, without an equal in the whole range of 
English literature, stands John Milton. He was born in Lon¬ 
don, December 9, 1608. His father, who was a scrivener, or, 
as we would say, conveyancer, and who had suffered much for 
conscience’ sake, doubtless infused into his son those principles 
of religious freedom which made him, in subsequent years, 
the bulwark of that holy cause in England. He was also early instructed in 
music, to which may doubtless be attributed that richness and harmony of versi¬ 
fication which distinguished him as much as his learning and imagination. His 
early education was conducted with great care. At sixteen he entered the 
University of Cambridge. After leaving the university, where he was distin¬ 
guished for his scholarship, he retired to the house of his father, who had 
relinquished business, and had purchased a small property at Horton in Buck¬ 
inghamshire. Here he lived five years, devoting his time most assiduously to 
classic literature, making the well-known remark that he “cared not how late 
he came into life, only that he came fit.” While in the university he had 
written his grand “ Hymn on the Nativity,” any one verse of which was suffi¬ 
cient to show that a new and great light was about to rise on English poetry; 
and there, at his father’s, he wrote his “ Comus ” and “ Lycidas,” his “ L’Alle¬ 
gro ” and “II Penseroso,” and his “Arcades.” 

In 1638 he went to Italy, the most accomplished Englishman that ever 
visited her classic shores. Here his society was courted by “the choicest 
Italian wits,” and he visited Galileo, then a prisoner in the Inquisition. On his 
return home, he opened a school in London, and devoted himself with great 
assiduity to the business of instruction. In the meantime he entered into the relig¬ 
ious disputes of the day, engaging in the controversy single-handed against all the 
royalists and prelates ; and, though numbering among his antagonists such men as 
Bishop Hall and Archbishop Usher, proving himself equal to them all. In 1643 
he married the daughter of Richard Powell, a high royalist; but the connection did 
not prove a happy one, his wife being utterly incapable of appreciating the lofti¬ 
ness and purity of the poet’s character. In 1649 he was appointed foreign secre¬ 
tary under Cromwell, which office he held until the death of Cromwell 1658 

566 


















JOHN MILTON. 


567 


For ten years Milton s eyesight had been failing, owing to the “ wearisome 
studies and midnight watchings ” of his youth. The last remains of it were sacri¬ 
ficed in the composition of his “ Defensio Populi ” (Defense of the People of Kng- 
land), and by the close of the year 1652 he was totally blind: “Dark, dark, dark, 
amid the blaze ol noon.” At the Restoration he was obliged to conceal himself 
until the publication of the act of oblivion released him from danger. He then 
devoted himself exclusively to study, and especially to the composition of “ Para¬ 
dise Lost.” The idea of this unequaled poem was probably conceived as early as 
1642. It was published in 1667. For ^ le first and second editions the blind poet 
received but the sum of five pounds each! In 1671 he produced his “Paradise 
Regained ” and “Samson Agonistes.” A long sufferer from gout, his life was now 
drawing to a close. His mind was calm and bright to the last, and he died without 
a struggle on Sunday, the 8th of November, 1674. 

Milton has left to us a description of himself as he had been in early man¬ 
hood and as he was later. He says : 

“ My stature certainly is not tall; but it rather approaches the middle than the 
diminutive. Nor, though very thin, was I ever deficient in courage or in strength ; 
and I was wont constantly to exercise myself in the use of the broadsword as long 
as it comported with my habit and my years. Armed with this weapon, as I 
usually was, I should have thought myself quite a match for any one, though much 
stronger than myself. At this moment I have the same courage, the same strength, 
though not the same eyes. Yet so little do they betray any external appearance 
of injury, that they are as unclouded and bright as the eyes of those who most 
distinctly see. Though I am more than forty-five years old, there is scarcely any 
one to whom I do not appear ten years younger than I really am.” 

Milton was a Puritan, but not of that narrow-minded, ascetic variety whose 
peculiarities we usually connect with the name. When Charles II came to the 
throne it was to be expected that Milton would be one of those for whom there 
would be no mercy. He had been accessory, both before and after the fact, to the 
execution of Charles I, and had filled an important post under Cromwell. His 
name, however, was not on the long list of those excluded from the benefits of the 
Bill of Indemnity, and when it was published, in August, 1660, he emerged from 
the hiding-place in which he had been for some time concealed. 

His prose writings pertained to the political and theological questions of his 
time, and are now no longer read. His beautiful odes to mirth and melancholy, 
“L’Allegro” and “II Penseroso”; the “Masque of Comus,” prepared for what we 
would call an amateur theatrical entertainment; his “Samson Agonistes”; his 
“Hymn to the Nativity,” and, above all, the “Paradise Lost,” continue to be 
studied by every lover of noble literature. 

We should not, however, allow our admiration for Milton’s poetry to cause us 
to forget his services to the cause of civil and religious liberty. It is not to be 
expected that many people will ever read his tracts against the pretensions of the 
Church, justifying the execution of the king, or even the powerful argument by 
which he attempted to prevent the recall of the Stuarts and to perpetuate the Com¬ 
monwealth after Cromwell’s death. Their phraseology seems to us stilted and the 
style antiquated and verbose, but if we will remember the changes which two cen- 


568 


JOHN MILTON. 


turies and a half have caused in our manner of expression, we shall be able to 
appreciate the grace and force of the language, the vast learning and high purpose 
of the author, and we will understand their great influence on the thought of 
Milton’s time. In 1644 he addressed to Parliament the most masterly of his 
prose writings, the “ Areopagitica; a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Print¬ 
ing.” It is, perhaps, the most able argument ever produced upon the subject, 
and not only for this reason, but because of its noble statement of the value of 
good books, deserves to be read and reread by every thinking person. 


- 4 - 

EVE’S ACCOUNT OF HER CREATION. 
Paradise Lost, IV. 


Kj'^lHAT day I oft remember, when from sleep 
jgj g I first awaked, and found myself reposed, 
- Under a shade, on flowers, much wonder¬ 
ing where 

And what I was, whence thither brought, and how. 
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound 
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread 
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved, 

Pure as the expanse of heaven : I thither went 
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down 
On the green bank, to look into the clear 
Smooth lake, that to me seem’d another sky. 

As I bent down to look, just opposite 
A shape within the watery gleam appear’d. 
Bending to look on me : I started back. 

It started back; but pleased I soon return’d, 
Pleased it return’d as soon, with answering looks 
Of sympathy and love: there I had fix’d 
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire, 
Had not a voice thus warn’d me: ‘‘ What thou 
seest, 

What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself; 
With thee it came and goes; but follow me, 


And I will bring thee where no shadow stays 
Thy coming and thy soft embraces; he 
Whose image thou art: him thou shalt enjoy 
Inseparably thine; to him shalt bear 
Multitudes like thyself, and thence be call’d. 
Mother of human race.” What could I do, 

But follow straight, invisibly thus led ? 

Till I espied thee, fair indeed, and tall, 

Under a platane; yet, methought, less fair, 

Less winning soft, less amiably mild, 

Than that smooth watery image : back I turn’d; 
Thou, following, criedst aloud, “ Return, fair Eve, 
Whom fliest thou? whom thou fliest, of him thou 
art, 

His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent 
Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart, 
Substantial life, to have thee by my side 
Henceforth an individual solace dear. 

Part of my soul, I seek thee, and thee claim, 

My other half.” With that, thy gentle hand 
Seized mine : I yielded ; and from that time see 
How beauty is excell’d by manly grace, 

And wisdom, which alone is truly fair. 




INVOCATION TO LIGHT. 
Paradise Lost, III. 


AIL, holy Light ! offspring of heaven first 
born, 

Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam. 

May I express thee unblamed ? since God is 
light, 

And never but in unapproached light 
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, 

Bright effluence of bright essence increate. 

Or hear’st thou rather, pure ethereal stream, 
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun, 


Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice 
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest 
The rising world of waters dark and deep, 

Won from the void and formless infinite. 

Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, 

Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detain’d 
In that obscure sojourn ; while in my flight, 
Through utter and through middle darkness borne. 
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, 

I sung of Chaos and eternal Night; 


















JOHN MILTON. 


5 6 9 


Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down 
The dark descent, and up to reascend, 

Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe, 

And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou 
Revisit’st not these eyes, that roll in vain 
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; 

So thick a drop serene hath quench’d their orbs, 
Or dim suffusion veil’d. Yet not the more 
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt 
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, 

Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief 
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, 
That wash thy hallow’d feet, and warbling flow, 
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget 
Those other two equall’d with me in fate, 

So were I equall’d with them in renown, 

Blind Thamyris and blind Mseonides, 

And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old : 

Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move 


Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird 
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid 
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year 
Seasons return ; but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 

Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, 

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ; 

But cloud instead, and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair, 
Presented with a universal blank 
Of nature’s works, to me expunged and rased, 
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 

So much the rather thou, celestial Light, 

Shine inward, and the mind through all he» 
powers 

Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thenc. 
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 
Of things invisible to mortal sight. 


-•• 0 ^ 0 *- 


FROM L’ALLEGRO. 



“ From betwixt two aged oaks 
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met ."—L'Allegro. 


fgjfgASTE thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 
Jest and youthful Jollity, 

Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, 
Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles, 


Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek, 

And love to live in dimple sleek; 
Sport that wrinkled care derides, 

And laughter holding both his sides. 
Come, and trip it, as you go, 

On the light fantastic toe; 

And in thy right hand lead with thee 
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty ; 
And, if I give thee honordue, 

Mirth, admit me of thy crew, 

To live with her, and live with thee, 
In unreproved pleasures free. 

To hear the lark begin his flight, 

And singing startle the dull Night, 
From his watch-tower in the skies, 
Till the dappled Dawn doth rise ; 
Then to come in spite of sorrow, 

And at my window bid good morrow, 
Through the sweet-brier or the vine, 
Or the twisted eglantine : 

While the cock, with lively din, 
Scatters the rear of darkness thin, 
And to the stack or the barn door 
Stoutly struts his dames before. 


And ever, against eating cares, 

Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 

Married to immortal verse ; 

Such as the meeting soul may pierce, 

In notes, with many a winding bout 
Of linked sweetness long drawn out, 

With wanton heed and giddy cunning ; 
The melting voice through mazes running. 


5 
























57° 


JOHN MILTON. 


Untwisting all the chains that tie 
The hidden soul of harmony; 

That Orpheus’ self may heave his head 
From golden slumber on a bed 
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear 


Such strains as would have won the ear 
Of Pluto, to have quite set free 
His half-regained Eurydice. 

These delights if thou cans’t give, 
Mirth, with thee I mean to live. 




A BOOK NOT A DEAD THING. 
“ Areopagttica.” 


DENY not .but that it is of the greatest 
concernment in the church and common¬ 
wealth to have a vigilant eye how books 
demean themselves, as well as men ; and there¬ 
after to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice 
on them as malefactors. For books are not abso¬ 
lutely dead things, but do contain a progeny 
of life in them to be as active as that soul was 
whose progeny they are. Nay, they do preserve, 
as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of 
that intellect that bred them. I know they are as 
lively and as vigorously productive as those fab¬ 
ulous dragon’s teeth; and, being sown up and 
down, may chance to spring up armed men. And 
yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, 
as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. 
Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature— 
God’s image ; but he who destroys a good book 
kills reason itself—kills the image of God, as it 



were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to 
the earth, but a good book is the precious life¬ 
blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured 
up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true no 
age can restore a life whereof, perhaps, there is no 
great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft re¬ 
cover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of 
which whole nations fare the worse. 

We should be wary, therefore, what persecution 
we raise against the living labors of public men ; 
how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved 
and stored up in books, since we see a kind of 
homicide may be thus committed—sometimes a 
martyrdom ; and if it extend to a whole impres¬ 
sion, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution 
ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, 
but strikes at the ethereal essence, the breath of 
reason itself—slays an immortality rather than 
a life. 


•O^O* 


FROM THE HYMN TO THE NATIVITY. 


Tg|T was the winter wild, 

While the heaven-born child 

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger 
lies; 

Nature, in awe to him, 

Had doff’d her gaudy trim, 

With her great Master so to sympathize; 

It was no season then for her 

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour. 



No war or battle’s sound 
Was heard the world around, 

The idle spear and shield were high up hung; 
The hooked chariot stood 
Unstain’d with hostile blood ; 

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng; 


And kings sat still with awful eye, 

As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was 
by. 

But peaceful was the night, 

Wherein the Prince of Light 

His reign of peace upon the earth began : 

The winds, with wonder whist, 

Smoothly the waters kist, 

Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, 

Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed 
wave. 


The stars, with deep amaze, 
Stand fix’d in steadfast gaze, 





















JOHN MILTON. 


Bending one way their precious influence: 

And will not take their flight, 

For all the morning light, & 

Or Lucifer, that often warn’d them thence ; 

But in their glimmering orbs did glow, 

Until theii Lord himself bespake, and bid them 
go- 

The shepherds on the lawn, 

Or e er the point of dawn, 

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row ; 

Full little thought they, than 
That the mighty Pan 

Was kindly come to live with them below; 
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep, 

Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy 
keep. 

When such music sweet 
Their hearts and ears did greet, 

As never was by mortal finger strook; 
Divinely-warbled voice 
Answering the stringed noise, 

As all their souls in blissful rapture took : 

The air, such pleasures loathe to lose, 

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly 
close. 


The oracles are dumb, 

No voice or hideous hum 

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiv¬ 
ing. 

Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine, 


57 1 

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
No mighty trance, or breathed spell, 

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic 
cell. 

The lonely mountains o’er 
And the resounding shore, 

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; 
From haunted spring and dale, 

Edged with poplar pale, 

The parting Genius is with sighing sent: 

With flower-inwoven tresses torn, 

The Nymphs, in twilight shade of tangled thickets, 
mourn. 

In consecrated earth, 

And on the holy hearth, 

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight 
plaint. 

In urns and altars round, 

A drear and dying sound 

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; 
And the chill marble seems to sweat, 

While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted 
seat. 

But see, the Virgin bless’d 
Hath laid her Babe to rest; 

Time is, our tedious song should here have 
ending: 

Heaven’s youngest-teemed star 
Hath fix’d her polish’d car, 

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attend¬ 
ing, 

And all about the courtly stable 
Bright-harness’d angels sit in order serviceable. 


— ■»O<0 > O«-- 


THE DEPARTURE FROM EDEN. 

“ Paradise Lost.” Book XII . 


O spake our mother Eve, and Adam heard, 
Well pleased, but answered not; for now 
too nigh 

The Archangel stood, and from the other hill 
To their fixed station all in bright array 
The Cherubim descended ; on the ground 
Gliding meteorus, as the evening mist 
Risen from a river o’er the marish glides, 

And gathers ground fast at the laborer’s heel 
Homeward returning. High in front advanced 
The brandished sword of God before them blazed 
Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat, 

And vapor as the Libyan air adust, 

Began to parch that temperate clime. Whereat 


In either hand the hastening angel caught 
Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate 
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast 
To the subjected plain ; then disappeared. 

They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld 
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, 

Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate 
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms. 
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them 
soon : 

The world was all before them, where to choose 
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. 
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, 
Through Ede-n took their solitary way. 













THOMAS GRAY. 

AUTHOR OF THE IMMORTAL ELEGY. 

SINGLE noble masterpiece, the “Elegy Written in a Country 
Churchyard” is the foundation of the fame of Thomas Gray. He 
won distinction at Cambridge, and traveled abroad with Horace 
Walpole, who complained that Gray “ was too serious a companion 
for me ; he was for antiquities, etc., while I was for balls and 
plays. The fault was mine.” 

Returning to England after the death of his father, Gray 
spent the rest of his life at Cambridge. He was offered the post of poet laureate 
in 1757, but declined it. He became Professor of History at Cambridge, but was 
unfit for the office and delivered no lectures. 

The “Elegy” was printed in 1750. Few poems were ever so popular. It 
ran through eleven editions, and has ever since been one of those few favorite 
pieces that every one has by heart. His other poems contain a great number of 
famous lines, but are themselves little known. He died in 1771, in the fifty-fifth 
year of his age. 

Gray was small and delicate in person, handsome and refined, fond of fashion¬ 
able dress, and preferred to be known as a “gentleman ” rather than as a poet. 
Lowell says that the “Elegy” won its popularity, not through any originality of 
thought, but far more through originality of sound. Its simple language and the 
depth and sincerity of emotion which it expresses have given it a prominent place 
among the finest monuments of our literature. 




ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 


ETSjlHE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
gjj j| The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, 
The ploughman homeward plods his weary 
way, 

And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 
And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 

57 


Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds; 


Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower, 

The moping owl does to the moon complain 
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 
Molest her ancient solitary reign. 
































THOMAS GRAY. 


573 


Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering 
heap, 

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 

1 he rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 


Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 

I heir furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; 
How jocund did they drive their team afield ! 
How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy 
stroke ! 

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; 











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Gray’s Monument in the Churchyard at Stoke Pogis. 


The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
Or busy housewife ply her evening care; 

No children run to lisp their sire’s return, 

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 


Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 

The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Power, 

And all that Beauty, all that Wealth e’er gave, 
Await alike th’ inevitable hour. 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 





















574 


THOMAS GRAY. 


Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, 

If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise, 

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted 
vault 

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 

Can storied urn, or animated bust, 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? 

Can Honor’s voice provoke the silent dust, 

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death ? 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire, 

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d, 
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre: 

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page 
Rich with the spoils of Time did ne’er unroll; 

Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage, 

And froze the genial current of the soul. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene, 

The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear: 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 

And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast 
The little tyrant of his fields withstood ; 

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, 

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood. 

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, 
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray; 

Along the cool sequester’d vale of life 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 


Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect, 

Some frail memorial still erected nigh 

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture 
deck’d 

Implore the passing tribute of a sigh. 

For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonor’d dead, 
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; 

If chance, by lonely Contemplation led, 

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, 

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 

‘‘ Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, 

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn : 

“There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, 

His listless length at noontide would he stretch, 
And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 

“ Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove : 

Now drooping, woful wan, like one forlorn, 

Or crazed with Care, or cross’d in hopeless 
Love. 

* 

“ One morn I miss’d him on the ’custom’d hill, 
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree; 

Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, 

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he : 

“The next, with dirges due in sad array, 

Slow through the church-way path we saw him 
borne: 

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.” 


-•• 0 ^ 0 *—— 


THE EPITAPH. 



ERE rests his head upon the lap of earth 
A youth, to Fortune and to Fame un¬ 
known ; 

Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth, 
And Melancholy mark’d him for her own. 


Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, 
Heaven did a recompense as largely send. 


He gave to misery (all he had) a tear, 

He gain’d from Heaven (’twas all he wish’d) a 
friend. 

No farther seek his merits to disclose, 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,) 

The bosom of his Father and his God. 


















I 


ROBERT BURNS 








BEST LOVED OF SCOTTISH POETS. 



HE life of Robert Burns was not a model one. In some ways, and 
those the most important, its story is more useful for the warnings 
it conveys than for the example it affords. But we shall not be 
able to understand his poems if we do not know the story of his 
life, and not to know and love the poetry of Robert Burns is to 
miss the rarest, most touching, most thoroughly human note in 
English verse. 

The son of a hard-working, unsuccessful peasant farmer, his early years were 
spent in the monotonous toil of a laborer on a sterile Scottish farm. He had little 
education except that which he acquired from his father, who, as is often the case 
among Scotch peasants, was a man of serious mind, somewhat cultivated, and of 
noble character. 

Burns early began to rhyme and to make love, two occupations which seem 
to have gone on together all through his life. His poems were handed around in 
manuscript, and he acquired in this way considerable fame. The death of his father, 
in i 784, laid upon the young man of twenty-five the cares of the head of the family, 
a burden which he bravely assumed, but which was somehow always too heavy for 
him. Removing to a farm at Mossgiel, he fell in love with Jean Armour, the 
daughter of a mason. His difficulties on the farm, and the unpopularity into which 
his relations with Jean Armour brought him, thoroughly discouraged him. He 
determined to emigrate to the West Indies, and to procure the necessary funds, 
published, by subscription, a volume of his poems. This attracted the attention 
of literary people in Edinburgh, and on their invitation he gave up his proposed 
emigration and visited that city. His reception was most cordial. He, the uncul¬ 
tured peasant, captivated at once the refined and intelligent people among whom 
he was thrown. No poet was ever so quickly recognized. He published a 
new and enlarged edition of his poems, which yielded him nearly five hundred 

575 






















576 


ROBERT BURNS 


pounds; his new celebrity enabled him to secure the post of exciseman in 
Dumfriesshire, where he took a farm, having advanced nearly half of his returns 
from the poems to ease the burdens of his mother and brother, whom he left at 
Mossgiel. 

He was married to Jean Armour, and built, largely with his own hands, the 
cottage in which they were to live at Ellisland, in Dumfries. Here, “ to make 
a happy fireside chime to weans and wife,” he labored with an energy which 
promised better things, and all the circumstances seemed to indicate that a 
happy and prosperous life lay before the young poet. 



The De’il cam fiddlin thro’ the town, 
And danc’d awa wi’ the exciseman, 
And ilka wife cry’d, “ Auld Mahaun, 
We wish you luck o’ the prize, man.” 


As poet, farmer, and exciseman, he led a busy life, but he was not a suc¬ 
cessful farmer, and his office of exciseman favored his indulgence in drink. He 
gave up the farm and removed to Dumfries; his infirmities grew upon him, and 
he became unpopular; his health failed, and he died in 1796, not yet thirty-eight 
years old. 

His poetry is not English, but Scottish. Its rollicking fun, as in “Tam 
O’Shanter’s Ride,” its touching sentiment, as in “On Turning up a Mouse’s Nest 
















ROBERT BURNS. yjj 

with the Plough,” the truth and beauty of its descriptions of homely life, as in “ The 
I Cotter’s Saturday Night,” have rarely been equaled in the poems of any 
language. 

Burns wrote for the people. He knew all their life, their every emotion ; he 
stirred their patriotism by such poems as “ Scots Wha ha wi’ Wallace Bled,” or 
their affection for Scotland by “Ye Banks and Braes,” and moralized in “The Twa 
Dogs,” and many others, upon the circumstances of their life, and well deserves 
to be called “ the greatest poet that ever sprung from the bosom of the people 
and lived and died in an humble condition.” 



MY HEART’S IN THE HIGHLANDS. 



Y heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not 
here ; 

My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing 
the deer; 

I Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe— 
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go. 
j Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the 
North ! 

The birthplace of valor, the country of worth ; 

[ Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, 

The hills of the Highlands forever I love. 


Farewell to the mountains high covered with 
snow ! 

Farewell to the straths and green valleys below ! 

Farewell to the forests with wild-hanging woods ! 

Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods! 

My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not 
here, 

My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the 
deer; 

Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe— 

Mv heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go. 


THE BANKS O’ BOON. 

E banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon, 

How can ye bloom sae fresh and 
fair? 

How can ye chant, ye little birds, 

And I sae weary fu’ o’ care ? 

Thou’11 break my heart, thou warbling bird, 

That wantons through the flowering thorn ; 
Thou minds me o’ departed joys, 

Departed—never to return ! 




Oft ha’e I roved by bonnie Doon. 

To see the rose and woodbine twin*; 
And ilka bird sang o’ its luve, 

And fondly sae did I o’ mine. 

Wi’ lightsome heart I pu’d a rose, 

Fu’ sweet upon its thorny tree; 

And my false lover stole my rose, 

But ah! he left the thorn wi’ me. 


37 

























ROBERT BURNS 


57 8 


MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN. 


HEN chill November’s surly blast 
Made fields and forests bare, 
One evening, as I wander’d forth 
Along the banks of Ayr, 

I spied a man, whose aged step 
Seem’d weary’d, worn with care ; 

His face was furrow’d o’er with years, 
And hoary was his hair. 

Young stranger, whither wanderest thou ? 

(Began the reverend sage ;) 

Does thirst of wealth thy step constrain, 


And every time has added proofs 
That man was made to mourn. 


O man ! while in thy early years, 

How prodigal of time ! 

Mis-spending all thy precious hours 
Thy glorious youthful prime ! 
Alternate follies take the sway ; 

Licentious passions burn ; 

Which tenfold force give Nature’s law, 
That man was made to mourn. 








. ■ 


Imm 

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wmrnmmwm 


Wmh 

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Man Was Made to Mourn. 


Or youthful pleasures rage ? 

Or haply, prest with cares and woes, 
Too soon thou hast began, 

To wander forth, with me, to mourn 
The miseries of man ! 

The sun that overhangs yon moors, 
Out-spreading far and wide, 
Where hundreds labor to support 
A haughty lordling’s pride ; 

I’ve seen yon weary winter-sun 
Twice forty times return ; 


Look not alone on youthful prime, 

Or manhood’s active might: 

Man then is useful to his kind, 

Supported is his right. 

But see him on the edge of life, 

With cares and sorrows worn, 

Then age and want, oh ! ill-matched pair \ 
Show man was made to mourn. 

Many and sharp the numerous ills 
Inwoven with our frame ! 

More pointed still we make ourselves, 




















ROBERT BURNS, 


579 


Regret, remorse, and shame ! 

And man, whose heaven-erected face 
The smiles of love adorn, 

Man’s inhumanity to man 

Makes countless thousands mourn ! 


Yet, let not this too much, my son, 
Disturb thy youthful breast : 

This partial view of human-kind 
Is surely not the last ! 

The poor, oppressed, honest man, 


Had never, sure, been born, 

Had there not been some recompense 
To comfort those that mourn ! 

O Death ! the poor man’s dearest friend, 
The kindest and the best! 

Welcome the hour my aged limbs 
Are laid with thee at rest! 

The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow, 
From pomp and pleasure torn ; 

But, oh ! a blest relief to those 
That weary-laden mourn ! 



TAM 

H HEN chapman billies leave the street, 
And drouthy neebors, neebors meet, 

- And market days are wearing late, 

An’ folks begin to tak’ the gate; 

'While we sit bousing at the nappy, 

An’ gettin’ fou and unco happy, 

We think na on the lang Scots miles, 

The mosses, waters, slaps and styles, 

That lie between us and our hame, 

Where sits our sulky sullen dame, 
Gathering her brows like gathering storm, 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. 


O’SHANTER. 

This truth fand honest Tam O’Shanter,. 

As he frae Ayr ae night did canter 
(Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses, 
For honest men and bonnie lasses). 

O Tam ! hadst thou but been sae wise, 

As ta’en thy ain wife Kate’s advice ! 

She tauld thee well thou was a skellum, 

A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum; 
That frae November till October, 

Ae market-day thou was nae sober; 

That ilka melder, wi’ the miller, 

Thou sat as lang as thou had siller; 































5 8 ° 


ROBERT BURNS. 


That ev’ry naig was ca’d a shoe on, 

The smith and thee gat roaring fou on ; 

'That at the Lord’s house, ev’n on Sunday, 
Thou drank wi’ Kirton Jean till Monday. 

She prophesy’d, that laj;e or soon, 

Thou would be found deep drown’d in Doon ; 


Or catch’d wi’ warlocks in the mirk, 
By Alloway’s auld hunted kirk. 

Ah, gentle dames; it gars me greet, 
To think how mony counsels sweet, 
How mony lenghten’d sage advices, 
The husband frae the wife despises! 


• 0 ^ 0 *' 


BRUCE TO HIS MEN AT BANNOCKBURN. 


COTS wha hae wi Wallace bled, 
Scots whom Bruce has often led ; 
Welcome to your gory bed, 

Or to victorie ! 

Now’s the day, and now’s the hour; 

See the front o’ battle lour ; 

See approach proud Edward’s pow’r— 
Chains and slaverie ! 

Wha will be a traitor-knave ? 

Wha can fill a coward’s grave ? 

Wha sae base as be a slave ? 

Let him turn and flee ! 


Wha for Scotland’s king and law 
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw 
Freeman stand, or freeman fa’ 

Let him follow me ! 

By oppression’s woes and pains ! 

By our sons in servile chains ! 

We will drain our dearest veins, 

But they shall be free ! 

Lay the proud usurpers low ! 
Tyrants fall in every foe ! 

Liberty ’sin every blow ! 

Let us do or die ! 



—— 


THE COTTER’S SATURDAY NIGHT. 


OVEMBER chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh ; 
The shortening winter day is near a 
close; 

The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh ; 

The blackening trains o’ craws to their repose ; 
The toil-worn cotter frae his labor goes : 

This night his weekly moil is at an end ; 
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, 
And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hame- 
ward bend. 


At length his lonely cot appears in view, 

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree; 

Th’ expectant wee things, toddlin, stacher through 
To meet their dad, wi’ flicterin’ noise an’ glee. 
His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnily, 

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie’s smile, 
The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 

Does a’ his weary carking cares beguile, 

An’ makes him quite forget his labor and his 
toil. 


Belyve the elder bairns come drappin in, 

At service out, amang the farmers roun’; 

Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin 
A cannie errand to a neebor town. 

Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown, 

In youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her e’e, 
Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw new 
gown, 

Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee, 

To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 

Wi’ joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet, 

An’ each for other’s weelfare kindly spiers 
The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnoticed fleet 
Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears : 

The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; 

Anticipation forward points the view. 

The mother, wi’ her needle an’ her sheers, 

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the 
new; 

The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due. 



















ROBERT BURNS. 


581 


But hark ! a rap comes gently to the door; 

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same, 

Tells how a neebor lad cam’ o’er the moor, 

To do some errands, and convoy her hame. 
The wily mother sees the conscious flame 
Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek ; 
With heart-struck anxious care, inquires his 
name, 

While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak: 

Weel pleased the mother hears it’s nae wild worth¬ 
less rake ; 


O, happy love, where love like this is found ! 

O heartfelt raptures ! bliss beyond compare ! 
I’ve paced much this weary, mortal round, 

And sage experience bids me this declaie— 

“ If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, 
One cordial in this melancholy vale, 

’Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair, 

In other’s arms breathe out the tender tale, 
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the even¬ 
ing gale.” 



“ The sire turns o’er, wi’ patriarchal grace, 

The big Ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride.” 


Wi’ kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben, 

A strappan youth, he taks the mother’s eye; 
Blythe Jenny sees the visit’s no ill-ta’en : 

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye : 
The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy, 
But blate an’ laithfu’, scarce can weel behave ; 
The mother, wi’ a woman’s wiles, can spy 

What maks the youth sae bashfu’ an’ sae grave; 
Weel pleased to think her bairn’s respected like 
the lave. 


The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face, 

They round the ingle form a circle wide : 

The sire turns o’er, wi’ patriarchal grace, 

The big Ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride ; 

His bonnet reverently is laid aside, 

His lyart haffets wearin’ thin an’ bare ; 

Those strains that once did sweet in' Zion glide, 
He wales a portion with judicious care; 

And “ Let us worship God,” he says, wi’ solemn 
air. 





























GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 

THE POET OF SCORN, MISANTHROPY, AND DESPAIR. 

O writer of English has aroused more controversy, possessed more 
devoted friends and admirers, nor encountered more hostile 
criticism and deserved censure, than has Lord Byron. His 
descriptive poetry is probably unequaled, and he sometimes em¬ 
bodies noble thought in such beautiful form as to make the reader 
ready to forget the too generally vicious tone of his writings, his 
contempt for virtue, and the miserable vice in which he lived. 

He was an over-sensitive, wayward child, alternately indulged to excess and 
violently abused by his foolish mother. His father was a worthless spendthrift, 
who abandoned his wife and child when the latter was two years old. 

One of Byron’s feet was somewhat twisted, and the deformity seems to 
have been a great cause of disgust and offense to his mother, and a constant 
humiliation to him. His early life was passed in Scotland, in comparative 
poverty ; but in his eleventh year the death of a grand-uncle put him in posses¬ 
sion of a considerable estate, and made him, when he should come of age, a mem¬ 
ber of the House of Lords. He spent two years at Cambridge, and published 
a volume of poems, entitled “ Hours of Idleness,” as the principal result of his 
university life. These poems are chiefly remembered because of the harsh criti¬ 
cism with which they were greeted by the Edinburgh Review , and the vigorous, 
over-caustic reply which Byron published in the poetical satire called “ English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” Although he was, some years later, in a certain 
way, very popular, he was never again really on good terms with his fellows. He 
traveled abroad, and on his return to England published the first two cantos of 
“ Childe Harold.” It is difficult now to understand the fact, but the poem imme¬ 
diately achieved an unheard-of degree of popularity. Byron tells the whole 
story in a note in his diary: “ I awoke one morning and found myself famous.” 
In the four following years he wrote a number of poems, “The Giaour,” “The 
Bride of Abydos,” “The Corsair,” “Lara,” “The Siege of Corinth,” and “ Parisina.” 
His marriage to Miss Milbank resulted in a separation after a single year, and 
when his wife’s family discarded him he was no longer received in English 
society, and almost immediately went abroad. He lived, an embittered man, in 
Switzerland and in different Italian cities, a life of vice and profligacy too disgust¬ 
ing to relate. 


582 








































' ■ ■ 


















. 

■ 




























































GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 




J 


Turkish 2to T °H U P cause of the Greeks, then rebelling against their 
f i rr 1£ ] S Q ] lS ] ^ i S usua y thought of as a generous effort on behalf of human 

eedorn, which should to some extent atone for the selfish wickedness of his life. 
1 here is reason, however, to believe that he hoped to reap a reward in being 
made king ol the Greeks, and thus enabled to exult over his enemies and critics 
in England. He was seized with a fever, and died, in April, 1824, in his thirty- 
seventh year _ His best known works, besides those mentioned, are “The 
Prisoner of Chillon,” “ Manfred,” “ Mazeppa,” “ Sardanapalus,” “Cain,” and the 
un nis lec ong poem, “ Don Juan, in which he embodied his spirit of revolt 
against all the laws of social morality and religion. 


41 *$- 


THE LAND OF THE EAST. 
From “The Bride of Abydos.” 


NOW ye the land where the cypress and 
myrtle 

Are emblems of deeds that are done in 
their clime, 

Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the 
turtle, 

Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime ? 

Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, 

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever 
shine; 

Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with 
perfume, 

Wax faint o’er the gardens of Gul in her bloom; 

Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, 


And the voice of the nightingale never is mute; 

Where the tints of the earth and the hues of 
the sky, 

In color though varied, in beauty may vie, 

And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye; 
Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, 
And all, save the spirit of man, is divine?— 

’Tis the clime of the East; ’tis the Land of the 
Sun : 

Can he smile on such deeds as his children have 
done ? 

Oh ! wild as the accents of lovers’ farewell 
Are the hearts which they bear, and the tales 
which they tell. 





THE EVE OF THE BATTLE. 


From “ Childe Harold.” 

The battle of Quatre Bras is here referred to, not that of Waterloo, which took place two days after. On the night 
previous to the action, a ball was given at Brussels by the Duchess of Richmond. 


prj||i]HERE was a sound of revelry by night, 

|g Eg And Belgium’s capital had gather’d then 
®^ Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright 
The lamps shone o’er fair women and 
brave men; 

A thousand hearts beat happily ; and when 
Music arose with its voluptuous swell, 

Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spake again, 
And all went merry as a marriage bell; 

But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a ris¬ 
ing knell ! 


Did ye not hear it?—No ; ’twas but the wind, 
Or the car rattling o’er the stony street; 

On with the dance ! let joy be unconfined ; 

No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure 
meet 

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. 

But hark!—that heavv sound breaks in once 

✓ 

more, 

As if the clouds its echo would repeat; 

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before ! 

Arm ! arm ! it is—it is—the cannon’s opening roar ! 


















5 8 4 


GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 


Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro, 
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, 
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago 
Blush’d at the praise of their own loveliness; 
And there were sudden partings, such as press 
The life from out young hearts; and choking 
sighs, 

Which ne’er might be repeated : who could 
guess 

If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, 
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could 
rise ! 


And there was mounting in hot haste; the 
steed, 

The mustering squadron, and the clattering 
car, 

Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, 

And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; 

And the deep thunder, peal on peal, afar; 

And, near, the beat of the alarming drum 

Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; 

While throng’d the citizens with terror dumb, 
Or whispering with white lips—“ The foe ! They 
come! they come!” 


• o^o« 


THE ISLES OF GREECE. 


HE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece ! 
Where burning Sappho loved and sung, 
Where grew the arts of war and peace, 
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung ! 
Eternal summer gilds them yet, 

But all, except their sun, is set. 

The Scian and the Teian muse, 

The hero’s harp, the lover’s lute, 

Have found the fame your shores refuse; 

Their place of birth alone is mute 
To sounds which echo farther west 
Than your sires’ “ Islands of the - Blest.” 

The mountains look on Marathon— 

And Marathon looks on the sea ; 

And musing there an hour alone, 

I dreamed that Greece might still be free ; 

For standing on the Persians’ grave, 

I could not deem myself a slave. 

A king sate on the rocky brow 

Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis; 

And ships, by thousands, lay below, 

And men in nations;—all were his ! 

He counted them at break of day— 

And when the sun set, where were they? 

And where are they ? and where art thou, 

My country? On thy voiceless shore 
The heroic lay is tuneless now— 

The heroic bosom beats no more ! 

And must thy lyre, so long divine, 

Degenerate into hands like mine? 

’Tis something, in the dearth of fame, 

Though linked among a fettered race, 

To feel at least a patriot’s shame, 

Even as I sing, suffuse my face; 


For what is left the poet here ? 

For Greeks a blush—for Greece a tear. 

Must we but weep o’er days more blest ? 

Must we but blush?—Our fathers bled. 
Earth ! render back from out thy breast 
A remnant of our Spartan dead ! 

Of the three hundred grant but three, 

To make a new Thermopylae ! 

What, silent still? and silent all ? 

Ah ! no ;—the voices of the dead 
Sound like a distant torrent’s fall, 

And answer, “ Let one living head, 
But one arise,—we come, we come !” 
’Tis but the living who are dumb. 

In vain—in vain ; strike other chords; 

Fill high the cup with Samian wine ! 
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, 

And shed the blood of Scio’s vine ! 
Hark ! rising to the ignoble call— 

How answers each bold Bacchanal ! 

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, 
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone ? 
Of two such lessons, why forget 
The nobler and the manlier one ? 

You have the letters Cadmus gave— 
Think ye he meant them for a slave? 


Trust not for freedom to the Franks— 
They have a king who buys and sells; 
In native swords, and native ranks, 

The only hope of courage dwells ; 

But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, 
Would break your shield, however broad. 
















SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

POET, PHILOSOPHER, CRITIC, AND THEOLOGIAN. 

OLERIDGE was one of the strangest men who have made their 
mark in literature. Carlyle has described him in these words: 
“ Brow and head were round and of massive weight, but the face 

was flabby and irresolute ; his deep eyes of light hazel were as 

full of sorrow as inspiration ; the whole figure and air, good and 
amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute, heavy 
laden, highly aspired, and full of much suffering and meaning.” 

Coleridge could read the Bible at three years ; at six he delighted in “ Robin¬ 
son Crusoe” and the “Arabian Nights.” He was entered as a charity pupil at 
Christ’s Hospital, London, and his later education was obtained at Cambridge. 
Finding himself slightly in debt, he left the University and enlisted in the dragoons 
under an assumed name; but after a few months’ service his friends obtained his 
discharge. With Southey he planned an ideal republic, to be located on the Sus¬ 
quehanna, and to be called “The Pantisocracy ” ; but as not one of the directors 

had money sufficient to transport him to America, they abandoned their Utopian 
project. 

He married a Miss Fricker, a sister to Mrs. Southey, and for a time lived in 
the neighborhood of Wordsworth, near Grasmere. Here he wrote most of his best 
poetry, including “The Ode to the Departing Year,” “The Ancient Mariner,” and 
“ Christabel.” Coleridge was at this time a Unitarian in religion, and used to 
preach without compensation for the congregations of that faith. Receiving an 
annuity of one hundred and fifty pounds from wealthy admirers, he was enabled to 
travel in Germany. On his return he issued a periodical called The Friend , 
which, however, endured for less than a year. Some years before he had begun 
the use of opium to allay his sufferings from neuralgia, and he had now come 
completely under the dominion of the drug, so that when he tried to lecture in 
Bristol he was unable to keep his engagement. So complete was his failure that 

585 









































He Can Not Chuse but Hear 










































































































































































































































































































SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 


537 


he at last placed himself under the care of a physician in a suburb of London, 
where he passed in retirement the remaining nineteen years of his life. He had 
some years before abandoned his wife and three children to the care of Southey. 

The opium habit appears to have been overcome, and in his later years he 
wrote much prose, including the “Lay Sermons,” “ Biographia Literaria,” and 
. “ Aids to Reflection.” The house of Dr. Gillman became a great resort of culti¬ 
vated people, who delighted in the brilliant talk of Coleridge. He was always so 
delightful a talker that in his youthful days, Lamb tells us, his landlord was ready 
to give him free entertainment because his conversation attracted so many 
customers. His manner was always animated and sometimes violent; as Words¬ 
worth says : 

“ His limbs would toss about him with delight 

Like branches when strong winds the trees annoy.” 

The literary character of Coleridge has been said to resemble some vast 
unfinished palace. His mind was dreamy. No man probably ever thought more 
or more intensely ; but few of his works are really worthy of his genius. 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. 


*£fT IS an ancient Mariner, 
g And he stoppeth one of three. 

—“ “ By thy long beard and glittering eye, 

Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? 

“ The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide 
And I am next of kin ; 

The guests are met, the feast is set: 

May’st hear the merry din.” 

He holds him with his skinny hand, 

“ There was a ship,” quoth he. 


“ Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon ! ” 
Eftsoons his hand dropt he. 

He holds him with his glittering eye— 
The Wedding-Guest stood still, 

And listens like a three years’ child : 

'The Mariner hath his will. 

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: 

He can not chuse but hear; 

And thus spake on that ancient man, 

The bright-eyed Mariner. 


-.o^>o* 


THE PHANTOM SHIP. 

From “The Ancient Mariner.” 

It moved and moved, and took at last 


-HERE passed a weary time. Each throat 

Was parched, and glazed each eye. 

■- A weary time ! a weary time ! 

How glazed each weary eye, 

When, looking westward, I beheld 
A something in the sky ! 

At first it seemed a little speck, 

And then it seemed a mist; 


A certain shape, I wist. 

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! 

And still it neared and neared : 

As if it dodged a water-sprite, 

It plunged and tacked and veered. 

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked. 
We could nor laugh nor wail; 

















A Speck, a Mist, a Shape, I Wist! 





























































































SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 


5 8 9 


Through utter drought all dumb we stood 1 
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, 

And cried, A sail, a sail ! 

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, 
Agape they heard me call : 

Gramercy! they for joy did grin, 

And all at once their breath drew in, 

As they were drinking all. 

See ! see ! (I cried) she tacks no more ! 
Hither to work us weal; 

Without a breeze, without a tide, 

She steadies with upright keel! 

The western wave was all a-flame, 

The day was well nigh done ! 

Almost upon the western wave 
Rested the broad bright Sun ; 

When that strange shape drove suddenly 
Betwixt us and the Sun. 

And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, 
(Heaven’s Mother send us grace !) 

As if through a dungeon-grate he peered 
With broad and burning face. 

Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) 
How fast she nears and nears ! 

Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, 
Like restless gossameres? 


Are those her ribs through which the Sun 
Did peer, as through a grate? 

And is that Woman all her crew? 

Is that a Death ? and are there two ? 

Is Death that Woman’s mate? 

Her lips were red, her looks were free, 

Her locks were yellow as gold : 

Her skin was as white as leprosy, 

The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, 

Who thicks man’s blood with cold. 

The naked hulk alongside came, 

And the twain were casting dice; 

“ The game is done ! I’ve won, I’ve won ! ” 
Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 

The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out: 

At one stride comes the dark; 

With far-heard whisper, o’er the sea, 

Off shot the specter-bark. 

We listened and looked sideways up ! 

Fear at my heart, as at a cup, 

My life-blood seemed to sip ! 

The stars were dim, and thick the night, 

The steersman’s face by his lamp gleamed white ; 
From the sails the dew did drip— 

Till clomb above the eastern bar 
The horned Moon, with one bright star, 

Within the nether tip. 




THE ADIEU OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. 


ORTHWITH this frame of mine was 
wrenched 

With a woeful agony 
Which forced me to begin my tale, 

And then it left me free. 

“ Since then, at an uncertain hour, 

That agony returns; 

And till my ghostly tale is told, 

This heart within me burns. 

“ I pass, like night, from land to land, 

I have strange power of speech ; 

That moment that his face I see, 

I know the man that must hear me : 

To him my tale I teach. 

<< What loud uproar bursts from that door ! 
The wedding guests are there, 


But in the garden-bower the bride 
And bridemaids singing are : 

And hark ! the little vesper-bell, 

Which biddeth me to prayer. 

“ O wedding guest! this soul hath been 
Alone on a wide, wide sea: 

So lonely ’twas that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to be. 

“ O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 
’Tis sweeter far to me, 

To walk together to the kirk, 

With a goodly company ! 

“ To walk together to the kirk 
And all together pray, 











Thf Mariner ... is Gone. 












































































































































































SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 


59- 


While each to his great Father bends, 
Old men, and babes, and loving friends 
And youths and maidens gay ! 

“ Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 
To thee, thou wedding guest ! 
lie prayeth well who loveth well 
Both man, and bird, and beast. 

“ He prayeth best who loveth bes* 

All things, both great and small; 


For the dear Cxod who loveth us, 

He made and loveth all.”— 

The mariner, whose eye is bright, 

Whose beard with age is hoar, 

Is gone: and now the wedding guest 
Turned from the bridegroom’s door. 

He went like one that hath been stunned 
And is of sense forlorn : 

A sadder and a wiser man 
He rose the morrow morn. 


—— •o^>o*~— 

A CALM ON THE EQUATOR. 
From “The Ancient Mariner.” 


HE fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 
The furrow followed free ; 

We were the first that ever burst 
Into that silent sea. 

Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down, 
’Twas sad as sad could be ; 

And we did speak only to break 
The silence of the sea! 



All in a hot and copper sky, 

The bloody Sun at noon, 

Right up above the mast did stand, 
No bigger than the Moon. 

Day after day, day after day, 

We stuck, nor breath nor motion: 


As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean. 

Water, water, everywhere, 

And all the boards did shrink; 
Water, water, everywhere, 

Nor any drop to drink. 

The very deep did rot—O Christ! 
That ever this should be ! 

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 
Upon the slimy sea. 

About, about, in reel and rout 
The death-fires danced at night; 

The water, like a witch’s oils, 

Burnt green, and blue, and white. 











* 

* 

* 



* 

* 


THOMAS HOOD. 


HUMORIST AND POET. 



LTHOUGH Thomas Hood is chiefly remembered by his three 
poems, “The Song of the Shirt,” “The Bridge of Sighs,” and 
“Eugene Aram,” he was one of the most copious writers of his 
time. He was apprenticed in his youth to a wood-engraver, and 
had some success as a comic draughtsman. He began very early 
to write verses for periodicals, and, in 1822, became assistant 
editor of The London Magazine He was now thrown into the 
company of a most brilliant circle of literary men, including DeQuincey, Hazlitt, 
and Lamb. He married in 1824, and, with the aid of his brother-in-law, published a 
small volume of “ Odes and Addresses to Great People.” A short time afterward 
he wrote a series of magazine articles called “Whims and Oddities,” illustrated by 
himself, and soon became a very popular writer. In 1830 Hood began the publi¬ 
cation of the Comic Annual, which continued for eleven years. The failure of a 
business house with which he was connected involved him in great financial diffi- 
culty, and, refusing to take advantage of legal bankruptcy, he resolved, in order to 
live with greater economy, to remove to Coblenz in Germany, and, like Sir Walter 
Scott, pay his indebtedness by the work of his pen. He resided abroad for five 
years, returning to London in 1840, where he was editor of the New Monthly 
for two or three years. A pension was granted him in 1844, but he lived to enjoy 
it only until the following year. Hood has been regarded too exclusively as a 
humorist. In his best poems the element of humor is entirely wanting, but in most 
of his work there is a wonderful blending of humor and pathos. “ He tempts men to 
laugh, and then leads them to pity and relieve.” Though his wit was caustic, it was 
never coarse, and no single suggestion of impurity can be found in any of his writings. 


-- 


ITH fingers weary and worn, 

With eyelids heavy and red, 

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, 


Plying her needle and thread— 

Stitch ! stitch ! stitch ! 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt, 

And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch, 
She sang the “ Song of the Shirt 1 


THE SONG OF THE SHIRT. 

“ Work ! work ! work ! 

While the cock is crowing aloof! 
And work—work—work ! 

Till the stars shine through the roof! 
It’s oh ! to be a slave 

Along with the barbarous Turk, 
Where woman has never a soul to save. 
If this is Christian - work ! 


592 






































THOMAS HOOD, 


‘ Work—work—work ! 

Till the brain begins to swim; 
Work—work—work ! 

Fill the eyes are heavy and dim ! 
Seam, and gusset, and band, 

Band, and gusset, and seam, 

Till over the buttons I fall asleep, 
And sew them on in my dream! 


Oh ! men with sisters dear ! 

Oh ! men with mothers and wives ! 
It is not linen you’re wearing out, 

But human creatures’ lives! 

Stitch—stitch—stitch 1 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt, 
Sewing at once, with a double thread, 
A shroud as well as a shirt! 


“ But why do I talk of death, 

That phantom of grisly bone? 

I hardly fear his terrible shape, 

It seems so like my own— 

It seems so like my own, 

Because of the fast I keep: 

Oh God ! that bread should be so dear, 
And flesh and blood so cheap ! 


“ Work—work—work ! 

My labor never flags ; 

And what are its wages? A bed of straw, 
A crust of bread—and rags : 

A shatter’d roof—and this naked floor— 
A table—a broken chair— 

And a wall so blank my shadow I thank 
For sometimes falling there ! 



“ Oh God ! that bread should be so dear, 
And flesh and blood so cheap ! ” 




























THOMAS HOOD. 


594 

Work—work—work ! 

From weary chime to chime ; 

Work—work—work ! 

As prisoners work for crime ! 

Band, and gusset, and seam, 

Seam, and gusset, and band, 

Till the heart is sick and the brain benumb’d, 
As well as the weary hand ! 

u Work—work—work ! 

In the dull December light: 

And work—work—work ! 

When the weather is warm and bright: 
While underneath the eaves 
The brooding swallows cling, 

As if to show me their sunny backs, 

And twit me with the spring. 

“ Oh ! but to breathe the breath 

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet; 

With the sky above my head, 

And the grass beneath my feet: 


For only one short hour 
To feel as I used to feel, 

Before I knew the woes of want, 

And the walk that costs a meal ! 

% 

“ Oh ! but for one short hour ! 

A respite, however brief! 

No blessed leisure for love or hope, 

But only time for grief! 

A little weeping would ease my heart,— 
But in their briny bed 
My tears must stop, for every drop 
Hinders needle and thread ! ” 

With fingers weary and worn, 

With eyelids heavy and red, 

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, 

Plying her needle and thread ; 

Stitch—stitch—stitch ! 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt; 

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, 
Would that its tone could reach the rich 
She sung this “ Song of the Shirt! ” 




THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS. 
“ Drown’d ! Drown’d !” —Hamlet. 


NE more unfortunate, 
Weary of breath, 
Rashly importunate, 
Gone to her death ! 

Take her up tenderly, 

Lift her with care ; 
Fashion’d so slenderly, 
Young, and so fair ! 

Look at her garments 
Clinging like cerements; 
While the wave constantly 
Drips from her clothing; 
Take her up instantly, 
Loving, not loathing.—• 

Touch her not scornfully; 
Think of her mournfully, 
Gently and humanly; 

Not of the stains of her, 
All that remains of her 
Now is pure womanly. 

Make no deep scrutiny 
Into her mutiny 
Rash and undutiful; 


Past all dishonor, 

Death has left on her 
Only the beautiful. 

Still, for all slips of hers, 

One of Eve’s family,— 

Wipe those poor lips of hers, 
Oozing so clammily. 

Loop up her tresses 
Escaped from the comb, 

Her fair auburn tresses ; 
Whilst wonderment guesses, 
Where was her home ? 

Who was her father ? 

Who was her mother ? 

Had she a sister ? 

Had she a brother ? 

Or was there a dearer one 
Still, and a nearer one 
Yet, than all other? 

Alas ! for the rarity 
Of Christian charity 
Under the sun ! 









THOMAS HOOD. 


595 


Oh ! it was pitiful! 

Near a whole city full, 
Home had she none. 

Sisterly, brotherly, 
Fatherly, motherly, 
Feelings had changed : 
Love, by harsh evidence, 



“ Take her up tenderly; 
Lift her with care.” 


Thrown from its eminence ; 
Even God’s providence 
Seeming estranged. 


Where the lamps quiver 
So far in the river, 

With many a light 
From window and casement, 
From garret to basement, 
She stood, with amazement, 
Houseless by night. 


The bleak wind of March 
Made her tremble and shiver r 
But not the dark arch, 

Or the black flowing river: 
Mad from life’s history, 

Glad to death’s mystery, 

Swift to be hurl’d— 
Anywhere, anywhere, 

Out of the world ! 

In she plunged boldly, 

No matter how coldly 
The rough river ran,— 

Over the brink of it. 

Picture it, think of it, 
Dissolute Man ! 

Lave in it, drink of it, 

Then, if you can ! 

Take her up tenderly, 

Lift her with care ; 

Fashion’d so slenderly, 

Young, and so fair ! 

Ere her limbs frigidly 
Stiffen too rigidly, 

Decently,—kindly,— 

Smooth, and compose them; 
And her eyes close them, 
Staring so blindly! 


Dreadfully staring 
Thro’ muddy impurity, 
As when with the daring 
Last look of despairing 
Fix’d on futurity. 


Perishing gloomily, 
Spurr’d by contumely, 
Cold inhumanity, 
Burning insanity, 

Into her rest,— 

Cross her hands humbly, 
As if praying dumbly, 
Over .her breast! 


Owning her weakness, 

Her evil behavior, 

And leaving, with meekness, 
Her sins to her Saviour. 




















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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

THE FOUNDER OF THE LAKE SCHOOL OF POETRY. 

T was the mission of Wordsworth to bring back the art of poetry to 
nature. He contended that the ordinary affairs of daily life are 
fit subjects for poetry, and that the language of the poet should be 
that really used by men. He thus violated all the established rules 
of poetic diction, encountered the most hostile criticism, and drew 
upon himself and those with whom he was associated showers of 
ridicule. It was only after fifty years that he was recognized as the 
first poet of his age. There can be no doubt that he erred upon the side of 
simplicity, descending at times even to triviality, and so justified the ridicule with 
which the first critics of his age received his poems. On the other hand, there are 
golden veins of real poetry running throughout everything he has written, and in 
some places, as in his “Ode on Immortality,” he rises to the perfection of human 
utterance. 

His parents were of the middle class, and he was intended for the church, but 
as he came near the time when he should have definitely prepared himself for the 
ministry, he found himself more and more inclined to devote his life to poetry. In 
this resolution he persevered, and the measure of his devotion may be judged 
from the fact that for the sake of his chosen vocation he resolutely faced a life of 
poverty, and contrived to live with his sister for about eight years upon the income 
of a legacy of nine hundred pounds left him by a friend of his youth. A debt of 
some three thousand pounds due his father being finally paid, the poet was placed 
beyond pecuniary difficulty. 

In 1798 Wordsworth and his sister made a tour of Germany in company with 
Coleridge. Returning, he took up his residence at Grasmere, in the Lake region, 
and afterward at Rydal Mount, which was his home during the remainder of his 
uneventful life. Coleridge and Southey also made their home in the Lake 
region, and thus the three came to be known, somewhat in derision, as the “ Lake 
Poets.” 1 

Wordsworth’s most extensive work, “The Excursion,” appeared in 1814. It 
was intended to be only a part of an extended poem to be entitled “The Recluse,” 
having for its principal subject “The Sensations and Opinions of a Poet Living in 
Retirement.” It was to be composed of three parts: “The Prelude,” not published 
until 1850, “The Excursion,” and a third which was never written. “The Excur- 

596 























































WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 


597 



sion was received by the critics with the greatest hostility. “ This will never do ’ 

lT \vf 7 7 " it is longer, weaker, and tamer than any of 

of 7, , ’ S °‘b r select 'ons, with less boldness of originality and less even 

< Lvrical iL^f , S ! m . piClty a ^ d lowli ness of tone which wavered so prettily in the 
t cr r , , L et ween silliness and pathos.” But others have not agreed with 
Jeffrey and he himself was led in later years to modify his views. 

, ordsworth filled for many years the office of distributor of stamps for West¬ 
moreland, and in 1843 succeeded Southey as poet laureate. His domestic life 
was unclouded and happy. He had received a pension of three hundred pounds a 
year, and, resigning his office of stamp distributor to his son, he lived in the quiet 

seclusion of the beautiful region in which he had fixed his home until his death 
in 1850. 

His best-known 
poems are “The Ex¬ 
cursion,” “ Heart- 
leap Well,’’the “Ode 
on Immortality,” 

“She Was a Phan¬ 
tom of Delight,” and 
“We are Seven.” 

Those which have 
been most ridiculed 
are “Peter Bell,” 

“The Idiot Boy,”, 

“Alice Fell,” and 
“The Blind High¬ 
land Boy.” 

Wo r dsworth 
brought back into 
popularity the son¬ 
net, which since 
Milton’s day had 
fallen out of English 
poetry. His fame 

seems to grow with the lapse of time, and his place among famous poets is a high 
one. 


The Tomb of Wordsworth. 



OUR IMMORTALITY. 

Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. 


UR birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 
The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar: 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

8 


And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home: 

Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
























598 


WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 


Upon the growing boy, 

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows 
He sees it in his joy ; 

The youth, who daily farther from the east 
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest, 

And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended ; 

At length the man perceives it die away, 

And fade into the light of common day. 

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; 
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 
And even with something of a mother’s mind, 
And no unworthy aim, 

The homely nurse doth all she can 
To make her foster-child, her inmate man, 
Forget the glories he hath known, 

And that imperial palace whence he came. 

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 
Thy soul’s immensity; 

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep 
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, 

That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep, 
Haunted forever by the eternal mind,— 

Mighty prophet! Seer blest! 

On whom those truths do rest, 

Which we are toiling all our lives to find, 

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; 
Thou, over whom thy immortality 
Broods like the day, a master o’er a slave, 

A presence which is not to be put by; 

Thou little child, yet glorious in the might 
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height, 
Why with such earnest pains doth thou provoke 
The years to bring the inevitable yoke 
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, 
And custom lie upon thee with a weight, 

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! 


O joy that in our embers 
Is something that doth live, 

That nature yet remembers 
What was so fugitive ! 

The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
Perpetual benediction : not indeed 
For that which is most worthy to be blest; 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, 

With new-fledged hopes still fluttering in h 
breast:— 

Not for these I ra : se 

The song of thanks and praise; 

But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 

Fallings from us, vanishings ; 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 

High instincts before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : 

But for those first affections 
Those shadowy recollections, 

Which, be they what they may, 

Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 

Are yet a master light of all our seeing; 

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake 
To perish never ; 

Which neither listlessnei-.s, nor mad endeavor, 
Nor man nor boy, 

Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 

Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 

Hence in a season of calm weather 
Though inland far we be, 

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither, 

Can in a moment travel thither, 

And see the children sport upon the shore, 

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 




TO A SKYLARK. 


P with me ! up with me into the clouds ! 

For thy song, Lark, is strong; 

Up with me, up with me into the 
clouds ! 

Singing, singing, 

With clouds and sky about thee ringing, 

Lift me, guide me till I find 
That spot which seems so to thy mind! 

I have walked through wildernesses dreary, 

And to-day my heart is weary; 


Had I now the wings of a Faery, 

Up to thee would I fly. 

There’s madness about thee, and joy divine 
In that song of thine ; 

Lift me, guide me high and high 
To thy banqueting-place in the sky. 

Joyous as morning, 

Thou art laughing and scorning ; 

Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, 
And, though little troubled with sloth, 










WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 


599 


Drunken Lark ! thou wouldst be loath 
To be such a Traveler as I. 

Happy, happy Liver, 

W ith a soul as strong as a mountain River 
Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, 
Joy and jollity be with us both ! 


Alas ! my journey, rugged and uneven, 

Ihrough prickly moors or dusty ways must wind ; 
But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, 

As full of gladness and as free of heaven, 

I, with my late contented, will plod on, 

And hope for higher raptures, when Life’s dav is 
done. 


•O^O* •— 


ODE TO DUTY. 



TERN Daughter of the Voice of God ! 
| O Duty ! if that name thou love 


Who art a Light to guide, a Rod 
To check the erring, and reprove ; 


1 hou, who art victory and law 
W hen empty terrors overawe ; 

From vain temptations dost set free, 

And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity 


Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead’s most benignant grace; 

Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon Thy face; 

Flowers laugh before Thee on their beds; 

And Fragrance in Thy footing treads ; 

1 hou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 

And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are 
fresh and strong. 


There are who ask not if Thine eye 
Be on them—who, in love and truth, 

Where no misgiving is, rely 

Upon the genial sense of youth : 

Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot; 

Who do Thy work, and know it not: 

Long may the kindly impulse last! 

But Thou, if they should totter, teach them to 
stand fast! 


To humbler functions, awful Power ! 

I call Thee : I myself commend 
Unto Thy guidance from this hour : 

Oh, let my weakness have an end ! 

Give unto me, made lowly wise, 

The spirit of self-sacrifice ; 

The confidence of reason give, 

And in the light of truth Thy bondman let me 
live ! 


-•O'0 > o*- 


TO 

HE was a phantom of delight 

When first she gleamed upon my sight 
A lovely Apparition, sent 
To be a moment’s ornament. 

Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair, 

Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair, 

But all things else about her drawn 
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; 

A dancing Shade, an Image gay, 

To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 

I saw her, upon nearer view, 

A Spirit, yet a Woman too; 

Her household motions light and free, 

And steps of virgin-liberty ; 

A countenance in which did meet 


HIS WIFE. 

Sweet records, promises as sweet; 

A creature not too bright and good 
For human nature’s daily food, 

For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 


And now I see with eye serene 
The very pulse of the machine ; 

A being breathing thoughtful breath. 

A traveller between life and death ; 

The reason firm, the temperate will, 
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; 
A perfect Woman, nobly planned, 

To warn, to comfort, and command; 

And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
With something of angelic light. 



















ALFRED TENNYSON. 

THE FIRST OF MODERN POETS. 

THER poets have written for particular classes ; Browning for the 
philosophers, Wordsworth for those whose intense love of nature 
can see beauty and needed truth in the commonest and simplest 
objects and events. But Tennyson has written for every one who 
loves the beautiful in nature or the noble in action, or whose heart 
can be moved by the story of great deeds set to the stirring music 
of perfect verse. Tennyson was the son of an English clergy¬ 
man, and was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 6, 1809. The father was 
distinguished by a love of learning, and by his devotion to music, painting, and 
literature. These qualities, as well as his fondness for out-door living, were inher¬ 
ited by his children, and two of Alfred’s brothers wrote poetry ; indeed, at one time 
his brother Charles gave greater promise of excelling than did he. Tennyson was 
educated in Trinity College, Cambridge, where his poem, “ Timbuctoo,” gained the 
Chancellor’s medal. He did not complete his college course, and very little is known 
of the details of his life. He always exhibited an intense dislike for publicity in any 
form, which effectually kept people away. He once wrote to a friend that he 
“ thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that 
the world knew nothing, of Shakespeare but his writings, and that he knew nothing 
of Jane Austen, and that there were no letters preserved either of Shakespeare or 
of Jane Austen.” 

Tennyson’s earliest published volume was a little book, the joint work of his 
brother Charles and himself, entitled “ Poems by Two Brothers.” In 1830 
appeared another volume, “ Poems, Chiefly Lyrical,” which contained the promise 
of much of his best work. 

The first reference to the legends of King Arthur, which furnished the subject 
of so much of his later work, occurs in the volume published in 1832. Among 
these poems were “The Lady of Shalott,” and “The Miller’s Daughter,” the chief 
oeauty of which lay in the songs included in it, one of which, the most charming, is: 

Love that hath us in a net, 

Can he pass and we forget? 

Many suns arise and set. 

Many a chance the years beget. 

Love the gift is Love the debt. 

Even so. 

600 
























ALFRED TENNYSON. 


601 


Love is hurt with jar and fret. 

Love is made a vain regret. 

Eyes with idle tears are wet. 

Idle habit links us yet. 

What is love ? for we forget; 

Ah, no ! no ! 

Tennyson’s two volumes, “ English Idyls and Other Poems,” appeared in 1842, 
and made him famous. He treated the question of the position of woman in society 
in “The Princess: A Medley,” a poem containing many noble passages, but which 
has been chiefly valued for the songs it contains. His best known work, “In 
Memoriam,” is an elaborate elegy for his early friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, a 
young man of marked literary ability, who was betrothed to Tennyson’s sister, and 
who died in 1833. The book is composed of one hundred and twenty-nine short 
poems, some of which are of surpassing beauty. It appeared in 1850, and seven 
years later it was followed by “ Maud, and Other Poems,” which, while admired by 
many, and containing much very noble verse, was, for some reason, a disappoint¬ 
ment to the lovers of Tennyson. In 1859 he published the first of the “Idyls of 
the King,” which were followed later by a number of others, all relating to the 
Arthurian myth. From this time every year or two added something to his list of 
poems which, while of unequal merit, well sustained the reputation of the poet. 

In 1850 Tennyson had succeeded Wordsworth as poet laureate, and he 
enjoyed for many years a pension of two hundred pounds a year, granted him 
when he was comparatively unknown. Mr. Milnes, who was expected to secure 
this pension, was one day visiting Carlyle, who asked him when it would be done. 
“My dear Carlyle,” replied Milnes, “the thing is not so easy as you suppose. 
What will my constituents say, if I do get a pension for Tennyson ? They know 
nothing about him or his poetry, and they will probably think he is some poor 
relation of my own, and that the whole affair is a job.” 

“Richard Milnes,” answered Carlyle, “on the Day of Judgment, when the 
Lord asks you why you didn’t get that pension for Alfred Tennyson, it will not do 
to lay the blame on your constituents ; it is you that will be damned.” Peel was 
prime minister, and asked advice as to whether he should give such a pension to 
Tennyson or to Sheridan Knowles, saying, “ I do n’t know either of them.” 
“ What! ” said Milnes. “ Have you never seen the name of Knowles on a play¬ 
bill ? ” “No.” “And never read one poem of Tennyson’s ? ” “No.” Milnes 

sent him “Locksley Hall” and “Ulysses,” and advised him to give the pension 
to Knowles, if it were charity, but if it were for the promotion of English litera¬ 
ture, to give it to Tennyson. 

Carlyle wrote to Emerson in 1844 that Tennyson was: “One of the finest 
looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusty-dark hair; bright, 
laughing, hazel eyes ; massive, aquiline face—most massive, yet most delicate ; of 
sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking ; clothes cynically loose, free, and 

easy_smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical-metallic, fit for loud laughter 

and piercing wail, and all that may lie between ; speech and speculation free and 
plenteous. I do not meet in these last decads such company over a pipe.” 


602 


ALFRED TENNYSON. 


Tennyson lived in and about London until his fortieth year, when he married 
Emily Sellwood, and took up his residence at Twickenham, until he removed, in 
the early fifties, to Faringford, in the Isle of Wight, where he lived for many years. 
About 1869 he purchased a place at Petersfield, Hampshire, and, afterward, Aid- 
worth House, near Haslemere, Surrey, where he continued to live until he died 
from old age, October 6, 1892. 

His physician, Sir Andrew Clark, says of his deathbed: “In all my experience 
I have never witnessed anything more glorious. There were no artificial lights in 
the chamber, and all was in darkness save for the silvery light of the moon at its 
full. The soft beams of light fell upon the bed and played upon the features of 
the dying poet like a halo of Rembrandt.” 

- 41 #-- 


SONG OF THE BROOK. 


COME from haunts of coot and hern : 
I make a sudden sally 
And sparkle out among the fern, 

To bicker down a valley. 

By thirty hills I hurry down, 

Or slip between the ridges; 

By twenty thorps, a little town, 

And half a hundred bridges. 

Till last by Philip’s farm I flow 
To join the brimming river; 

For men may come and men may go, 

But I go on forever. 

I chatter over stony ways, 

In little sharps and trebles; 

I bubble into eddying bays, 

I babble on the pebbles. 

With many a curve my banks I fret 
By many a field and fallow, 

And many a fairy foreland set 
With willow-weed and mallow. 

I chatter, chatter, as I flow 
To join the brimming river; 

For men may come and men may go, 

But I go on forever. 

I wind about, and in and out, 

With here a blossom sailing, 

And here and there a lusty trout, 

And here and there a grayling. 


And here and there a foamy flake 
Upon me, as I travel, 

With many a silvery waterbreak 
Above the golden gravel; 

And draw them all along, and flow 
To join the brimming river ; 

For men may come and men may go, 
But I go on forever. 

I steal by lawns and grassy plots ; 

I slide by hazel covers; 

I move the sweet forget-me-nots 
That grow for happy lovers. 

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, 
Among my skimming swallows, 

I make the netted sunbeam dance 
Against my sandy shallows. 

I murmur under moon and stars 
In brambly wildernesses; 

I linger by my shingly bars; 

I loiter round my cresses; 

And out again I curve and flow 
lo join the brimming river ; 

For men may come and men may go, 
But I go on forever. 










ALFRED TENNYSON. 


PRELUDE TO “IN MEMORIAM.” 


TRONG Son of God, mmortal Love, 
Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
Believing where we can not prove ; 

Thine are these orbs of light and shade; 
Thou madest life, man and brute; 

Thou madest death ; and lo, thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made. 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; 

Thou madest man, he knows not why; 
He thinks he was not made to die ; 

And thou hast made him : thou art just. 

Thou seemest human and divine, 

The highest, holiest manhood thou : 

Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours to make them thine. 

Our little systems have their day ; 

They have their day and cease to be : 
They are but broken lights of thee, 

And thou, O Lord, art more than they, 

We have but faith : we can not know; 

For knowledge is of things we see; 


And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness: let it grow. 

Let knowledge grow from more to more 
But more of reverence in us dwell, 
That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before, 

But vaster. We are fools and slight; 
We mock thee, when we do not fear; 
But help thy foolish ones to bear ; 
Help thy vain world to bear thy light. 

Forgive what seem’d my sin in me ; 
What seemed my worth since I began 
For merit lives from man to man, 

And not from man, O Lord, to thee. 

Forgive my grief for one removed, 

Thy creature, whom I found so fair. 

I trust he lives in thee, and there 
I find him worthier to be loved. 

Forgive these wild and wandering cries, 
Confusions of a wasted youth ; 
Forgive them where they fail in truth, 
And in thy wisdom make me wise. 



-■ ' ■ » 0 ^ 0 »' 


RING OUT, WILD BELLS. 
“In Memoriam.” 


ING out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
The flying cloud, the frosty light; 
The year is dying in the night; 
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 



Ring out the want, the care, the sin, 

The faithless coldness of the time; 

Ring out, ring out, my mournful rhymes 
But ring the fuller minstrel in. 


Ring out the old, ring in the new, 
Ring, happy bells, across the snow; 
The year is going, let him go ; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 
For those that here we see no more; 
Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 
Ring in redress to all mankind. 

Ring out a slowly dying cause, 

And ancient forms of party strife; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life, 
With sweeter manners, purer laws. 


Ring out false pride in place and blood, 
The civic slander and the spite ; 

Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of good. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ; 
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; 
Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

















604 


ALFRED TENNYSON. 


THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 


N either side the river lie 

Long fields of barley and of rye, 

That clothe the world and meet the sky; 
And thro’ the field the road runs by 
To many-towered Camolet; 

And up and down the people go, 

Gazing where the lilies blow 
Round an island there below, 

The island of Shalott. 



Only reapers, reaping early 
In among the bearded barley, 
Hear a song that echoes cheerly 
From the river winding clearly 

Down to tower’d Camelot; 



“ Out flew the web and floated wide; 
The mirror crack’d from side to side.” 


And by the moon the reaper weary, 
Piling sheaves in uplands airy, 
Listening, whispers, “ ’Tis the fairy 
Lady of Shalott.” 


There she weaves by night and day 
A magic web with colors gay. 

She has heard a whisper say, 

A curse is on her if she stay 

To look down to Camelot. 


She knows not what the curse may be, 
And so she weaveth steadily, 

And little other care hath she, 

The Lady of Shalott. 


Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, 

An abbot on an ambling pad, 
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, 

Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad, 
Goes by to tower’d Camelot; 
And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue 
The knights come riding two and two ; 
She hath no royal knight and true, 

The Lady of Shalott. 


A bow-shot from her bower-eaves, 

He rode between the barley sheaves, 

The sun came dazzling through the leaves 
And flamed upon the brazen greaves 
Of bold Sir Lancelot. 

A redcross knight forever kneeled 
To a lady in his shield, 

That sparkled on the yellow field, 

Beside remote Shalott. 


His broad, clear brow in sunlight glow’d; 
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode; 
From underneath his helmet flow’d 
His coal-black curls as on he rode, 

As he rode down to Camelot. 

From the bank and from the river 
He flashed into the crystal mirror, 

“ Tirra lirra,” by the river 
Sang Sir Lancelot. 


She left the web, she left the loom, 
She made three paces thro’ the room. 
She saw the water-lily bloom, 

She saw the helmet and the plume, 

She look’d down to Camelot. 
Out flew the web and floated wide; 
The mirror crack’d from side to side; 
“The curse is come upon me,” cried 
The Lady of Shalott. 


In the stormy east-wind straining, 

The pale yellow woods are waning, 

The broad stream in his banks complainin 
Heavily the low sky raining 

Over tower’d Camelot; 
























ALFRED TENNYSON. 


605 


Down she came and found a boat 
Beneath a willow left afloat, 

And round about the prow she wrote 
The Lady of Shalott. 

Under tower and balcony, 

By garden-wall and gallery, 

A gleaming shape she floated by, 

A corse between the houses high, 
Silent into Camelot. 

Out upon the wharves they came, 
Knight and burgher, lord and dame, 


And round the prow they read her name, 
The Lady of Shalott. 

Who is this? and what is here? 

And in the lighted palace near 
Died the sound of royal cheer: 

And they cross’d themselves for fear, 

All the knights of Camelot : 

But Lancelot mused a little space : 

He said, “ She has a lovely face : 

God in his mercy lend her grace, 

The Lady of Shalott.” 




SWEET AND LOW. 
A Lullaby. 


WEET and low, sweet and low, 

Wind of the western sea, 

Low, low, breathe and blow, 

Wind of the western sea! 

Over the rolling waters go, 

Come from the dying moon, and blow, 

Blow him again to me, 

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. 


Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 

Rest, rest, on mother’s breast, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 

Father will come to his babe in the nest, 

Silver sails all out of the west 
Under the silver moon ; 

Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep 



• O^O* 


THE HERE AND THE HEREAFTER. 
“In Memoriam.” 


YET we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 

To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; 

That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
That not one life shall be destroy’d, 

Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the pile complete ; 

That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 

That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire, 

Or but subserves another’s gain. 

Behold, we know not anything, 

I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last—far off—at last to all, 

And every Winter change to Spring. 

So runs my dream : but what am I ? 

An infant crying in the night; 

An infant crying for the light, 

And with no language but a cry. 


The wish that of the living whole 
No life may fail beyond the grave, 
Derives it not from what we have 
The likest God within the soul ? 

Are God and Nature then at strife ? 

That Nature tends such evil dreams? 
So careful of the type she seems, 

So careless of the single life; 

That I considering everywhere 
Her secret meaning in her deeds, 

And finding that of fifty seeds 
She often brings but one to bear, 

I falter where I firmly trod, 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God, 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 



















6o5 


ALFRED TENNYSON. 



THE PASSING OF ARTHUR. 


“English Idyls.” 


Clothed with his breath and looking, as he walk’d. 
Larger than human on the frozen hills. 

#•••••••• 

And on a sudden, lo ! the level lake, 

And the long glories of the winter moon. 

Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, 
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, 

Beneath them ; and descending they were ’ware 
That all the decks were dense with stately forms, 
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream. By 
these 

Three Queens with crowns of gold ; and from 
them rose 

A cry that shivered to the tingling stars; 

And, as it were one voice, an agony 
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills 
All night in a waste land where no one comes, 

Or hath come, since the making of the world. 
Then murmur’d Arthur, “ Place me in the 
barge,” 

And to the barge they came. There these three 
Queens 

Put forth their hands, and took the King, and 
wept. 

But she that rose the tallest of them all 
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, 

And loosed the shattered casque, and chafed his 
hands, 

And call’d him by his name, complaining loud, 
And dropping bitter tears against his brow 
Striped with dark blood : for all his face was 
white 

And colorless, and like the wither’d moon 
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east; 
And all his greaves, and cuisses dash’d with drops 
Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls— 

That made his forehead like a rising sun 
High from the dais-throne—were parched with 
dust; 

Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, 

Mixed with the knightly growth that fringed his 
lips. 

So like a shatter’d column lay the King. 

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere: 

“ Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go ? 

Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? 

For now I see the true old times are dead, 

When every morning brought a noble chance, 
And every chance brought out a noble knight. 
Such times have been not since the light hath led 
The Holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. 

But now the whole Round Table is dissolved, 
Which was an image of the mighty world, 

And I, the last, go forth companionless, 


Remorsefully regarded through his tears, 

And would have spoken, but he found not words. 
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, 
O’er both his shoulders drew the languid hands, 
And rising bore him through the place of tombs. 

But as he walk’d King Arthur panted hard, 
Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed 
When all the house is mute. So sighed the King, 
Muttering and murmuring at his ear, “ Quick, 
quick ! 

I fear it is too late, and I shall die ! ” 

But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge 


“ An arm 

Rose up from out the bosom of the lake.” 




ND answer made King Arthur, breathing 
hard : 

‘‘My end draws nigh: ’tis time that I 
were gone. 

Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight 
And bear me to the margin; yet I fear 
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die.” 

So saying, from the pavement he half rose, 
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, 

And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes 
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere 


























































ALFRED TENNYSON 


607 


And the days darken round me, and the years, 
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.” 

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: 
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfils himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? 

I have lived my life, and that which I have done 
May He within himself make pure ! But thou, 

If thou shouldst never see my face again, 

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by 
prayer 

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy 
voice 

Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 

For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend? 


For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 

But now farewell. I am going a long way 
With these thou seest—if indeed I go— 

(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) 

To the island-valley of Avilion ; 

Where falls not hail nor rain, or any snow, 

Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies 
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns, 
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea, 
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.” 

So said he, and the barge with oar and sail 
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan, 
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, 

Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood 
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere 
Revolving many memories, till the hull 
Look’d one black dot against the verge of dawn, 
And on the mere the wailing died away. 


-..o^o« 


BUGLE SONG. 

“ The Princess.” 


HE splendor falls on castle walls 
And snowy summits old in story; 

The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, 
dying. 



O hark, O hear; how thin, how clear, 

And thinner, clearer, further going ! 

O sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing ! 

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying; 

Blow bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, 
dying. 


O love, they die in yon rich sky, 

They faint on hill or field or river; 

Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 

And grow forever and forever. 

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, 
dying. 



The splendor falls on castle walls 


o<>o* 


BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. 



REAK, break, break 

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea ! 

And I would that my tongue could utter 
The thoughts that arise in me. 


O well for the fisherman’s boy, 

That he shouts with his sister at play ! 
O well for the sailor-lad, 

That he sings in his l?oat on the bay ! 


























6o8 


ALFRED TENNYSON. 


And the stately ships go on 
To their haven under the hill; 

But O for the touch of a vanished hand 
And the sound of a voice that is still ! 


Break, break, break 

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! 

But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me. 


•O<0>O« 


GARDEN SONG. 
“ Maud.” 


OME into the garden, Maud, 

For the black bat, Night, has flown ;- 
Come into the garden, Maud, 

I am here at the gate alone, 

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 
And the musk of the roses blown. 

For a breeze of morning moves, 

And the planet of Love is on high, 

Beginning to faint in the light that she loves, 
To faint in his light and die. 

All night have the roses heard 
The flute, violin, bassoon; 

All night hath the casement jessamine stirr’d 
To the dancer’s dancing in tune, 

Till a silence fell with the waking bird, 

And a hush with the setting moon. 

I said to the lily, “ There is but one 
With whom she has heart to be gay; 

When will the dancers leave her alone ? 

She is weary of dance and play.” 

Now half to the setting moon are gone, 

And half to the rising day; 


Low on the sand and loud on the stone 
The last wheel echoes away. 

• ••••••* 

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls, 
Come hither, the dances are done, 

In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls, 

Queen lily and rose in one; 

Shine out, little head, running over with curls, 
To the flowers, and be their sun. 

There has fallen a splendid tear 

From the passion flower at the gate. 

She is coming, my dove, my dear; 

She is coming, my life, my fate ! 

The red rose cries, “ She is near, she is near,” 
And the white rose weeps, “ She is late;” 

The larkspur listens, “I hear, I hear,” 

And the lily whispers, “ I wait.” 

She is coming, my own, my sweet; 

Were it ever so airy a tread 

My heart would hear her and beat, 

Were it earth in an earthy bed; 

My dust would hear her and beat, 

Had I lain for a century dead ; 

Would start and tremble under her feet, 

And blossom in purple and red. 



•O'v'O*' 


TEARS, IDLE TEARS. 
“The Princess.” 


EARS, idle tears, I know not what they 
mean: 

Tears from the depths of some divine 
despair 

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 

In looking on the happy autumn-fields, 

And thinking of the days that are no more. 

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 

That brings our friends up from the under-world ; 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 


Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 

Dear as remembered kisses after death, 

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love, 

Deep as first love, and wild as all regret; 

O death in Life ! the days that are no more. 






























CHARLES 11ADDON STURGEON. 


FREDERICK W. 


WRITERS OF RELIGIOUS CLASSICS. 


FARRAR. 
















DR. JOHN WATSON. 

“IAN MACLAREN.” 


T is very rarely indeed that a man nearly forty-three years old, 
absorbed in the labors of an arduous profession in which he has 
achieved distinction, comes suddenly into world-wide fame in an 
entirely different field. The publication of the sketches grouped 
together under the title “ Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush” brought 
to Dr. Watson the fame of a master of literary art. His skill as 
a delineator of character, his wonderful power of penetrating the 
interior of the shell with which men surround their inner selves, the delicacy of 
his intuitions, no less than the inherent interest of his subjects and his skill in 
selecting them, have given Dr. Watson a place in the affections of his readers 
probably not possessed by any other living author. 

John Watson was the only child of Scottish parents, being born in England 
during their temporary residence in that country. His mother’s maiden name, 
Maclaren, and the gaelic form of his name, John, give us his pen name, “Ian 
Maclaren.” His boyhood home was in the Scottish town of Perth. His school 
and college vacations were largely spent at farm-houses in Scotland, among his 
maternal relatives, and in those summer weeks of unfettered country life he gath¬ 
ered wonderful knowledge of Scottish peasants, of “roups” and “tacks,” of 
“horses, pleughs, and kye.” His parents removed to Stirling, and later made their 
last home in Edinburgh, where John was in the university. Among his fellow- 
students were Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry Drummond, and of the three 
Watson seems to have been the closest and most faithful student. In 1870 he 
entered upon the study of theology at Edinburgh, and spent one or two of his long 
vacations at Wurtemberg. Even in these days Mr. Watson excelled in the social 
accomplishment of story-telling, and no one could equal him in the power of pro¬ 
ducing humorous caricatures of his classmates, or even of his professors. At the 
close of his student career, and after serving for a few months as assistant in a 
large and influential congregation in Edinburgh, he surprised his friends by accept¬ 
ing a call to be minister of the Free Church of Logiealmond in Perthshire. In 
this secluded place, where, for a population of less than six hundred, there were 
three Presbyterian churches, representing the Established Church, the Free Church, 
and the United Presbyterian, he devoted himself to the service of his congregation, 
which numbered less than one hundred communicants. They were humble people, 
laboring-men, just as he has described them in the “ Bonnie Brier Bush,” and he 






























6 io 


DR. JOHN WATSON. 


was quickly in touch with all their life. His knowledge of crops and cattle and 
markets won their sympathy and respect even before his learning and power as a 
preacher and his devotion to the work of a pastor secured their affections. Here 
he labored until 1877, when he became the colleague of Doctor Samuel Miller in 
St. Matthew’s Church in Glasgow. The religious atmosphere in this old Scotch 
city was not, however, congenial to Mr. Watson. Its thought was too narrow, its 
sympathies too contracted, and it was, therefore, a relief, both to himself and his 
friends, when he was called to the leading Presbyterian church in Liverpool, where 
he soon built up a reputation as a preacher of unusual power, and where he has 
since remained. 

It was in 1893 that Dr. Robertson Nicholl induced him to send a sketch or two 
to the British Weekly . The “Lad of Pairts ” convinced everybody that either 
J. M. Barrie was writing in a new vein or that Ian Maclaren was another Scotch 
writer of equal gifts. The sketches were promptly gathered together into the vol¬ 
ume “Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush,” and “The Days of Auld Lang Syne” soon 
followed. “The Mind of the Master” is his best-known book of sermons, and he 
has written one novel, entitled “ Kate Carnegie,” which well maintained his repu¬ 
tation. 

The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon Mr. Watson by the 
University of St. Andrews in 1896, and in the autumn of that year he paid a visit 
to America (to deliver a course of lectures in one of the theological seminaries), 
and was everywhere received with the greatest enthusiasm. He delivered lectures 
and read from his books in the principal eastern cities, and frequently occupied the 
pulpits in Presbyterian and other churches, receiving more than one flattering invi¬ 
tation to take up a permanent residence in America. His return to the Sefton 
Park Church in Liverpool was greeted with a display of affection which must 
have touched his heart, and he announced to his congregation his intention 
to remain with them. Soon after his return a charge of heresy was brought 
against him ; but it is pleasant to know that it was dismissed almost without 
consideration by the church authorities. 



IN MARGET’S GARDEN. 

From “ Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush.” 



HE cart track to Whinnie Knowe was com¬ 
manded by a gable window, and Whinnie 
boasted that Marget had never been taken 
unawares. Tramps, finding every door locked, 
and no sign of life anywhere, used to express their 
minds in the “ close,” and return by the way 
they came, while ladies from Kildrummie, fearful 
lest they should put Mrs. Howe out, were met at 



the garden gate by Marget in her Sabbath dress, 
and brought in to a set tea as if they had been 
invited weeks before. 

Whinnie gloried most in the discomfiture of the 
Tory agent, who had vainly hoped to coerce him 
in the stackyard without Marget’s presence, as 
her intellectual contempt for the Conservative 
party knew no bounds. 














DR. JOHN WATSON. 


6ll 


“Sail, she saw him slip aff the road afore the 
last stile, and wheep roond the fit o’ the gairden 
wa’ like a tod (fox)aifter the chickens. 

“ ‘ It’s a het day, Maister Anderson,’ says Mar- 
get frae the gairden, lookin’ doon on him as calm 
as ye like. ‘ Yir surely nae gaein’ to pass oor 
hoose without a gless o’ milk ? ’ 

“ Wud ye believe it, he wes that upset he left 
withoot sayin’ ‘vote,’ and Drumsheugh telt me 
\ next market that his langidge aifterwards cudna be 
printed.” 

When George came home for the last time, 
Marget went back and forward all afternoon from 
his bedroom to the window, and hid herself be¬ 
neath the laburnum to see his face as the cart 
stood before the stile. It told her plain what she 
had feared, and Marget passed through her Geth- 
semane with the gold blossoms falling on her face. 
When their eyes met, and before she helped him 
down, mother and son understood. 

“Ye mind what I told ye o’ the Greek mothers 
the day I left? Weel, I wud hae liked to have 
carried my shield, but it wasnato be, so I’ve come 
home on it.” As they went slowly up the garden 
walk : “ I’ve got my degree, a double first, mathe¬ 
matics and classics.” 

“Ye’ve been a gude soldier, George, and 
faithfu’.” 

“Unto death, a’m dootin’, mother.” 

“Na,” said Marget, “unto life.” 

Drumtochty was not a heartening place in sick¬ 
ness, and Marget, who did not think our thoughts, 
endured much consolation at her neighbors’ hands. 
It is said that in cities visitors congratulate a 
patient on his good looks, and deluge his family 
with instances of recovery. This would have 
seemed to us shallow and unfeeling, besides being 
a “temptin’ o’ Providence,” which might not 
have intended to go to extremities, but on a chal¬ 
lenge of this kind had no alternative. Sickness 
was regarded as a distinction tempered with judg¬ 
ment, and favored people found it difficult to be 
humble. I always thought more of Peter McIn¬ 
tosh when the mysterious “ tribble ” that needed 
the Perth doctor made no difference in his 
manner, and he passed his snuff-box across the 
seat before the long prayer as usual; but in 


this indifference to privileges Peter was excep¬ 
tional. 

You could never meet Kirsty Stewart on equal 
terms, although she was quite affable to any one 
who knew his place. 

“Ay,” she said, on my respectful allusion to 
her experience, “a’ve seen mair than most. It 
doesna become me to boast, but tho’ I say it as 
sudna, I hae buried a’ my ain fouk.” 

Kirsty had a “ way ” in sick visiting, consisting 
in a certain cadence of the voice and arrangement 
of the face, which was felt to be soothing and 
complimentary. 

“ Yir aboot again, a’m glad to see,” to me after 
my accident, “ but yir no dune wi’ that leg; na, 
na. Jeems, that was ma second man, scrapit his 
shin aince, tho’ no so bad as ye’ve dune, a’m 
hearing (for I had denied Kirsty the courtesy of 
an inspection). It’s sax year syne noo, and he 
got up and wes traiveilin’ fell hearty like yersel’. 
But he begoon to dwam (sicken) in the end of the 
year, and soughed awa’ in the spring. Ay, ay, 
when tribble comes ye never ken hoo it’ll end. 
A’ thoucht I wud come up and speir for ye. A 
body needs comfort gin he’s sober (ill).” 

When I found George wrapped in his plaid be¬ 
side the brier bush, whose roses were no whiter 
than his cheeks, Kirsty was already installed as 
comforter in the parlor, and her drone came 
through the open window. 

“ Ay, ay, Marget, sae it’s come to this. Weel, 
we daurna complain, ye ken. Be thankfu’ ye 
haena lost your man and five sons besides twa 
sisters and a brither, no to mention cousins. 
That wud be something to speak aboot, and Losh 
keep’s, there’s nae saying but he rnicht hang on a 
whilie. Ay, ay, it’s a sair blow aifter a’ that wes 
in the papers. I wes feared when I heard o’ the 
papers; ‘ Lat weel alane,’ says I to the dominie; 
‘ye ’ill bring a judgment on the laddie wi’ yir 
blawing.’ But ye micht as weel hae spoken to 
the hills. Domsie’s a thraun body at the best,, 
and he was clean infatuat’ wi’ George. Ay, ay, 
it’s an awfu’ lesson, Marget, no to mak’ idols o’ 
our bairns, for that’s naethin’ else than provokin’ 
the Almichty.” 

It was at this point that Marget gave way and 





6i2 


DR. JOHN WATSON. 


scandalized Drumtochty, which held that obtrusive 
prosperity was an irresistible provocation to the 
higher powers, and that a skilful depreciation of 
our children was a policy of safety. 

“Did ye say the Almichty? I’m thinkin’ 
that’s ower grand a name for your God, Kirsty. 
What wud ye think o’ a faither that brocht hame 
some bonnie thing frae the fair for ane o’ his 
bairns, and when the puir bairn wes pleased wi’ it 
tore it oot o’ his hand and flung it into the fire? 
Eh, wumman, he wud be a meeserable, cankered, 
jealous body. Kirsty, wumman, when the Al¬ 
michty sees a mither bound up in her laddie, I 
tell ye He is sair pleased in His heaven, for mind 
ye hoo He loved His ain Son. Besides, a’m 
judgin’ that nane o’ us can love anither withoot 
lovin’ Him, or hurt anither withoot hurtin’ 
Him. 

“Oh, I ken weel that George is gaein’ to leave 
us; but it’s no because the Almichty is jealous o’ 
him or me, no likely. It cam’ to me last nicht 
that He needs my laddie for some grand wark in 
the ither world, and that’s hoo George has his 
bukes brocht oot tae the garden and studies a’ the 
day. He wants to be ready for his kingdom, just 
as he trachled in the bit schule o’ Drumtochty for 
Edinboro’. I hoped he wud hae been a minister 
o’ Christ’s Gospel here, but he ’ill be judge over 
many cities yonder. A’m no denyin’, Kirsty, 
that it’s a trial, but I hae licht on it, and naethin’ 
but glide thochts o’ the Almichty.” 

Drumtochty understood that Kirsty had dealt 
faithfully with Marget for pride and presumption ; 
but all we heard was, “ Losh keep us a’.” 

When Marget came out and sat down beside 
her son, her face was shining. Then she saw the 
open window. 

“ I didna ken.” 

“ Never mind, mither, there’s nae secrets 
atween us, and it gar’d my heart leap to hear ye 
speak up like yon for God. Div ye mind the 
nicht I called for ye, mother, and ye gave me the 
Gospel aboot God ? ” 

Marget slipped her hand into George’s, and he 
let his head rest on her shoulder. The likeness 
flashed upon me in that moment, the earnest, deep- 
set gray eyes, the clean-cut, firm jaw, and the ten¬ 


der, mobile lips, that blend of apparent austerity 
and underlying romance that make the pathos of 
a Scottish face. 

“ There had been a revival man here,” George 
explained to me, “ and he was preaching on hell. 
As it grew dark a candle was lighted, and I can 
still see his face as in a picture, a hard-visaged 
man. He looked down at us laddies in the front 
and asked us if we knew what-like hell was. By 
this time we were that terrified none of us could 
speak, but I whispered ‘ No.’ 

“ Then he rolled up a piece of paper and held 
it in the flame, and we saw it burn and glow and 
shrivel up and fall in black dust. 

“ ‘ Think,’ said he, and he leaned over the desk, 
and spoke in a gruesome whisper which made the 
cold run down our backs, ‘ that yon taper was 
your finger, one finger only of your hand, and it 
burned like that forever and ever, and think of 
your hand and your arm and your whole body all 
on fire, never to go out.’ We shuddered that you 
might have heard the form creak. 1 That is hell, 
and that is where ony laddie will go who does not 
repent and believe.’ 

“ It was like Dante’s Inferno, and I dared not 
take my eyes off his face. He blew out the can¬ 
dle, and we crept to the door trembling, not able 
to say one word. 

“That night I could not sleep, for I thought I 
might be in the fire before morning. It was har¬ 
vest time, and the moon was filling the room with 
cold clear light. From my bed I could see the 
stooks standing in rows upon the field, and it 
seemed like the judgment day. 

“ I was only a wee laddie, and I did what we 
all do in trouble, I cried for my mother. 

“Ye hae no forgotten, mither, the fricht that 
was on me that nicht ? ” 

“Never,” said Marget, “and never can; it’s 
hard wark for me to keep frae hating that man, 
dead or alive. Geordie gripped me wi’ baith his 
wee airms round my neck, and he cries over and 
over and over again, ‘ Is yon God ? ’ 

“Ay, and ye kissed me, mither, and ye said 
(it’s like yesterday), 4 Yir safe with me,’ and ye 
telt me that God micht punish me to mak me bet¬ 
ter if I was bad, but that He wud never torture 















DR. JOHN WATSON. 


613 


ony puir soul, for that cud dae nae guid, and was 
the devil’s wark. Ye asked me : 

“ ‘Am I a guid mother tae ye?’ and when I 
could dae naethin’ but hold, ye said, ‘ Be sure 
God maun be a hantle kinder.’ 

“ The truth came to me as with a flicker, and I 
cuddled down into my bed, and fell asleep in His 
love, as in my mother’s arms. 

“ Mither,” and George lifted up his head, 
“that was my conversion, and, mither dear, I 
hae longed a’ thro’ the college studies for the day 
when ma moothwud be opened wi’ this evangel.” 

Marget’s was an old-fashioned garden, with 
pinks and daisies and forget-me-nots, with sweet- 
scented wall-flower and thyme and moss roses, 
where nature had her way, and gracious thoughts 
could visit one without any jarring note. As 
George’s voice softened to the close, I caught her 
saying : “ His servants shall see His face,” and 

the peace of Paradise fell upon us in the shadow 
of death. 

The night before the end George was carried 
out to his corner, and Domsie, whose heart was 
nigh unto the breaking, sat with him the after¬ 
noon. They used to fight the college battles over 
again, with their favorite classics beside them, but 
this time none of them spoke of books. Marget 
was moving about the garden, and she told me 
that George looked at Domsie wistfully, as if he 
had something to say and knew not how to do it. 

After awhile he took a book from below his pil¬ 
low, and began, like one thinking over his words*. 

“ Maister Jamieson, ye hae been a gude freend 
tae me, the best I ever hed aifter my mither and 
faither. Wull ye tak this buik for a keepsake o’ 
yir grateful scholar? It’s a Latin ‘Imitation,’ 


dominie, and it’s bonnie printin’. Ye mind hoo 
ye gave me yir ain Virgil, and said he was a kind 
o’ Pagan sanct. Noo here is my sanct, and div 
ye ken I’ve often thocht Virgil saw his day afar 
off, and was glad. Wull ye read it, dominie, for 
my sake, and maybe ye’ll come to see—” and 
George could not find words for more. 

But Domsie understood. “ Ma laddie, ma lad¬ 
die, that I luve better than ony thin’ on earth, I’ll 
read it till I die, and, George, I’ll tell ye what 
livin’ man does na ken. When I was your verra 
age I had a cruel trial, and ma heart was turned 
frae faith. The classics hae been my Bible, 
though I said naethin’ to ony man against Christ. 
He aye seemed beyond man, and noo the veesion 
o’ Him has come to me in this gairden. Laddie, 
ye hae dune far mair for me than I ever did for 
you. Wull ye mak a prayer for yir auld dominie 
afore we pairt? ” 

There was a thrush singing in the birches and a 
sound of bees in the air, when George prayed in a 
low, soft voice, with a little break in it. 

“Lord Jesus, remember my dear maister, for 
he’s been a kind freend to me and mony a puir 
laddie in Drumtochty. Bind up his sair heart and 
give him licht at eventide, and may the maister 
and his scholars meet some mornin’ where the 
schule never skails, in the kingdom o’ oor 
Father.” 

Twice Domsie said Amen, and it seemed as the 
voice of another man, and then he kissed George 
upon the forehead ; but what they said Marget did 
not wish to hear. 

When he passed out at the garden gate, the 
westering sun was shining golden, and the face of 
Domsie was like unto that of a little child. 






















POET, NOVELIST, AND HISTORIAN. j 

ALTER SCOTT was a born teller of stories. It mattered very 
little whether he was talking to his delighted mates in the Edin¬ 
burgh High School, or writing “The Lady of the Lake,” or 
“Waverly,” or “The Life of Napoleon,” still he was simply telling 
stories for the pleasure of audiences which went on increasing more 
and more, until he became the writer of English most universally 
read, a distinction which he now probably shares only with Dickens. 
Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771. His father was a man of standing as an 
attorney, and after studying at the High School the son entered the father’s ! 
office as a clerk, and was called to the bar in 1792. He was a sturdy boy, of great \ 
strength and endurance, particularly as a pedestrian, although an accident had 
made him lame from childhood. When he was eighteen years old he became 
sheriff of Selkirkshire, which office yielded him an income of ^300 a year. 

He was married in 1797 to Miss Margaret Carpenter, the daughter of a 
French refugee, and the story of their early married life in their cottage at Lass- 
wade, on the banks of the Esk, is a delightful picture of domestic happiness. In 
1802 he published “The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,” which gave him con¬ 
siderable reputation as a historical poet. In 1803 he came to the final resolution of 
quitting his profession, observing, “There was no great love between us at the 
beginning, and it pleased Heaven to decrease it on further acquaintance.” In 1805 
he published “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” which was composed at the rate of a 
canto a week, and for which he obtained ^600. In 1808 appeared his “ Mar- 
mion,” which he sold for ^1000, the extraordinary success of which induced him, 
he says, for the first and last time of his life, to feel something approaching to 
vanity. This was succeeded by an edition of Dryden’s works, in eighteen volumes, 
with notes historical and explanatory, and a life of the author. In 1810 he com¬ 
posed his “ Lady of the Lake,” which was a great success, and which has 

614 


si “" 











































































































. 


' 

m 




















■ 






























I ■ 






i 





















































































SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


6i 5 

been characterized by some as the finest specimen of his poetical genius. Within 
lour years alter this appeared his “ Vision ol Don Roderick,” “ Rokebv ” and “ The 
Lord of the Isles.” 

The lame of Byron now seemed likely to overshadow Scott, and his last poems 
failed, perhaps.deservedly, to win the popularity of his earlier ones. He therefore 
began writing in prose, and published his story of “Waverly ” without attaching 
his name. I he novel was instantly successful, and for some years he continued to 
write anonymously, and the question of the identity of the “ Great Unknown ” was 
eagerly discussed in every literary circle. Following “Waverly,” came in rapid 
succession “Guy Mannering,” “The Antiquary,” “The Black Dwarf,” “Old 
Mortality,” “ Heart of Midlothian,” etc., about thirty novels in all. They are 



Scott’s Study at Abbotsford. 


mainly historical, and give a very correct picture of the times they represent. 
“The Monastery” and “The Abbot” are concerning Mary Queen of Scots; 
44 Kenilworth ” gives a fair picture of Elizabeth’s times ; “ The Fortunes of Nigel ” 
gives the reign of James I; “Woodstock,” the Civil War and the Commonwealth; 
“ Peveril of the Peak,” the reign of Charles II; “Waverly,” the period of the Pre¬ 
tender’s attempt to secure the throne in 1745 ; while “ Ivanhoe,” “The Talisman,” 
and “ Count Robert of Paris,” are concerning the Crusaders. 

Scott was now able to gratify his ambition by the purchase of a large landed 
property. So, on the banks of his favorite Tweed, near the ruins of Melrose Abbey, he 
purchased his estate, and gave it the name of Abbotsford. Here his happy family 
sprang up around him, and here in 1820 he received from George IV the coveted 











































6i6 


SIR WALTER SCOTT, 


title of baronet. No greater instance of pecuniary success was ever recorded than 
that of Scott, and no greater instance of pecuniary failure. The great publishing 
firm of Ballantyne & Co., in which Scott had a heavy interest, failed, involving 
Scott to the amount of more than a hundred thousand pounds. He retired 
immediately to Edinburgh and set courageously to work to pay off the immense 
debt by his pen. With so much success did he labor that in four years he had 
reduced the debt by one-half. He wrote the “Life of Napoleon/’ “Tales of a 
(Grandfather,” “Letters on Demonology,” “Woodstock,” and several other works, 
but now, in 1830, he began to break down: a stroke of paralysis foretold the 

end. He spent a year abroad in the attempt to recover his health, but turned 

homeward to die. He was brought, almost unconscious, to Abbotsford, where 

he passed away September 21, 1832. His two sons, two daughters, and several 

grandchildren survived him. His son-in-law, Lockhart, received his parting 
words : “Be a good man; be virtuous, be religious; be a good man. Nothing 
else will comfort you when you come to lie here.” 


***** 



************* 


THE PARTING OF MARMION AND DOUGLAS. 

“ Marmion.” 


OT far advanced was morning day, 

When Marmion did his troop array 
To Surrey’s camp to ride; 

He had safe conduct for his band 
Beneath the royal seal and hand, 

And Douglas gave a guide : 

The ancient Earl, with stately grace, 

Would Clara on her palfrey place, 

And whispered, in an undertone, 

“ Let the hawk stoop, his prey is flown.” 

The train from out the castle drew, 

But Marmion stopped to bid adieu.— 

“ Though something I might plain,” he said, 
“ Of cold respect to stranger guest, 

Sent hither by your king’s behest, 

While in Tantallon’s towers I staid ; 

Part we in friendship from your land, 

And, noble Earl, receive my hand.” 

But Douglas round him drew his cloak, 

Folded his arms, and thus he spoke : 

“My manors, halls, and bowers shall still 
Be open, at my sovereign’s will, 

To each one whom he lists, howe’er 
Unmeet to be the owner’s peer. 

My castles are my king’s alone, 

From turret to foundation stone— 

The hand of Douglas is his own ; 

And never shall in friendly grasp 
The hand of such as Marmion clasp.” 


Burned Marmion’s swarthy cheek like fire 
And shook his very frame for ire, 

And—“ This to me !” he said,— 

“An’ ’twere not for thy hoary beard, 

Such hand as Marmion’s had not spared 
To cleave the Douglas’ head ! 

And, first, I tell thee, haughty peer, 

He who does England’s message here, 

Although the meanest in her State, 

May well, proud Angus, be thy mate. 

And, Douglas, more, I tell thee here, 

E’en in thy pitch of pr-ide, 

Here in thy hold, thy vassals near 
(Nay, never look upon your lord, 

And lay your hands upon your sword), 

I tell thee, thou’rt defied ! ’ 

And if thou said’st I am not peer 
To any lord of Scotland here, 

Lowland or highland, far or near, 

Lord Angus, thou hast lied !”— 

On the Earl’s cheek the flush of rage 
O’ercame the ashen hue of age; 

Fierce he broke forth,—“And dar’st thou then 
To beard the lion in his den, 

The Douglas in his hall! 

And hopest thou hence unscathed to go? 

No, by St. Bride of Bothwell, no! 

Up drawbridge, grooms !—what, warder ; ho 1 










SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


617 


Let the portcullis fall.”— 

Lord Marmion turned—well was his need— 
And dashed the rowels in his steed, 

Like arrow through the archway sprung, 

The ponderous gate behind him rung: 

To pass there was such scanty room, 

The bars, descending, grazed his plume. 

The steed along the drawbridge flies, 

Just as it trembled on the rise ; 

Nor lighter does the swallow skim 
Along the smooth lake’s level brim; 

And when Lord Marmion reached his band, 
He halts, and turns with clenched hand, 


And shouts of loud defiance pours, 

And shook his gauntlet at the towers. 

“Horse! horse!” the Douglas cried, “and 
chase! ’ ’ 

But soon he reined his fury’s pace : 

“A royal messenger he came, 

Though most unworthy of the name. 

St. Mary mend my fiery mood ! 

Old age ne’er cools the Douglas’ blood, 

I thought to slay him where he stood.— 

’Tis pity of him, too,” he cried : 

“Bold can he speak, and fairly ride, 

I warrant him a warrior tried.”— 

With this his mandate he recalls, 

And slowly seeks his castle halls. 



Melrose Abbey. 


MELROSE ABBEY. 


“The Lay of the 

jrgjjlF THOU wouldst view fair Melrose aright, 
Or! Go visit it by the pale moonlight; 

For the gay beams of lightsome day 
Gild but to flout the ruins gray. 

When the broken arches are black in night, 

And each shafted oriel glimmers white; 

When the cold light’s uncertain shower 
Streams on the ruined central tower ; 

When buttress and buttress, alternately, 


Last Minstrel.” 

Seem framed of ebon and ivory; 

When silver edges the imagery, 

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die; 
When distant Tweed is heard to rave, 

And the owlet to hoot o’er the dead man’s grave, 
Then go—but go alone the while— 

Then view St. David’s ruined pile ; 

And, home returning, soothly swear, 

Was never scene so sad and fair ! 



































6 i8 


SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


THE FISHERMAN’S FUNERAL. 
“ The Antiquary.” 


H - R. Oldbuck soon arrived before the half- 

_ dozen cottages at Mussel-Crag. They 

now had, in addition to their usual squalid 
and uncomfortable appearance, the melancholy 
attributes of the house of mourning. The boats 
were all drawn up on the beach; and though the 
day was fine and the season favorable, the chant 
which is used by the fishers when at sea was silent, 
as well as the prattle of the children, and the 
shrill song of the mother as she sits mending her 
nets at the door. A few of the neighbors—some 
in their antique and well-saved suits of black, 
others in their ordinary clothes, but all bearing 
an expression of mournful sympathy with distress 
so sudden and unexpected—stood gathered around 
the door of Mucklebackit’s cottage, waiting “till 
the body was lifted.” As the Laird of Monk- 
barns approached they made way for him to enter, 
doffing their hats and bonnets as he passed, with 
an air of melancholy courtesy, and he returned 
their salutes in the same manner. 

Inside the cottage the body was laid within the 
wooden bedstead which the young fisher had occu¬ 
pied while alive. At a little distance stood the 
father, whose rugged, weather-beaten, counte¬ 
nance, shaded by his grizzled hair, had faced 
many a stormy night and night-like day. He 
was apparently revolving his loss in his mind, with 
that stony feeling of painful grief peculiar to harsh 
and rough characters which almost breaks forth 
into hatred against the world and all that remain 
in it after the beloved object is withdrawn. The 
old man had made the most desperate efforts to 
save his son, and had been withheld only by main 
force from renewing them at a moment when, 
without any possibility of assisting the sufferer, he 
must himself have perished. All this apparently 
was boiling in his recollection. His glance was 
directed sidelong toward the coffin, as an object 
on which he could not steadfastly look, and yet 
from which he could not withdraw his eyes. His 
answers to the questions which were occasionally 
put to him were brief, harsh, and almost fierce. 

His family had not yet dared to address to him 
a word either of sympathy or consolation. His 


masculine wife, virago as she was, and absolutely 
mistress of the family, as she justly boasted her¬ 
self, on all ordinary occasions, was by this great 
loss terrified into silence and submission, and 
compelled to hide from her husband’s observation 
the bursts of her female sorrow. As he had rejected 
food ever since the disaster had happened, not 
daring to approach him, she had that morning, 
with affectionate artifice, employed the youngest 
and favorite child to present her husband with 
some nourishment. His first action was to push it 
from him with an angry violence that frightened 
the child; his next was to snatch up the boy, and 
devour him with kisses. “ Ye ’ll be a braw fellow 
an’ ye be spared, Patie; but ye’ll never—never 
can be—what he was to me ! He has sailed his 
coble wi’ me since he was ten years auld, and there 
was na the like 0 * him drew a net betwixt this and 
Buchanness. They say folks maun submit; I will 
try.” And he had been silent from that moment 
until compelled to answer necessary questions. 

In another corner of the cottage, her face cov¬ 
ered by her apron which she had flung over it, sat 
the mother,—the nature of her grief sufficiently 
indicated by the wringing of her hands and the 
convulsive agitations of her bosom which the cov¬ 
ering could not conceal. Two of her gossips, 
officiously whispering into her ear the common¬ 
place topic of resignation under irremediable mis¬ 
fortune, seemed as if they were endeavoring to 
stem the grief which they could not console. The 
sorrow of the children was mingled with wonder 
at the preparations they beheld around them, and 
at the unwonted display of wheaten bread and wine 
which the poorest peasant or fisher offers to his 
guests on these mournful occasions; and thus their 
grief for their brother’s death was almost already 
lost in admiration of the splendor of his funeral. 

But the figure of the old grandmother was the 
most remarkable of the sorrowing group. Seated 
on her accustomed chair, with her usual air of 
apathy and want of interest in what surrounded 
her, she seemed every now and then mechanically 
to resume the motion of twirling her spindle, then 
to look toward her bosom for the distaff, although 








SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


both had been laid aside. She would then cast 
her eyes about, as if surprised at missing the usual 
implements of her industry, and appear struck at 
the black color of the gown in which they had 
dressed her, and embarrassed by the number of 
persons by whom she was surrounded. Then, 
finally, she would raise her head with a ghastly 
look, and fix her eyes upon the bed which con¬ 
tained the coffin of her grandson, as if she had at 
once, and for the first time, acquired sense to 
comprehend her inexpressible calamity. These 


alternate feelings of embarrassment, wonder, and 
grief seemed to succeed each other more than once 
upon her torpid features. But she spoke not a 
word, neither had she shed a tear; nor did one of 
the family understand, either from look or expres¬ 
sion, to what extent she comprehended the uncom¬ 
mon bustle around her. There she sat among 
the funeral assembly like a link between the sur¬ 
viving mourners and the dead corpse which they 
bewailed—a being in whom the light of existence 
was already obscured by the encroaching shadows 
of death. 


619 

At this moment the clergyman entered the cot* 
tage. He had no sooner received the mute and 
melancholy salutation of the company whom it 
contained, than he edged himself toward the un¬ 
fortunate father, and seemed to endeavor to slide 
in a few words of condolence or of consolation. 
But the old man was as yet incapable of receiving 
either. He nodded, however, gruffly, and shook 
the clergyman’s hand in acknowledgment of his 
good intentions ; but was either unable or unwil¬ 
ling to make any verbal reply. The minister next 


passed to the mother, moving along the floor as 
slowly, silently, and gradually as if he was afraid 
that the ground would, like unsafe ice, break 
beneath his feet, or that the first echo of a foot' 
step was to dissolve some magic spell, and plunge 
the hut, with all its inmates, into a subterranean 
abyss. The tenor of what he had said to the poor 
woman could only be judged by her answers, as, 
half-stifled by sobs ill-repressed, and by the cover¬ 
ing which she still kept over her countenance, she 
faintly answered, at each pause in his speech— 
“Yes, sir, yes! Ye’re very gude—ye’re very 



Kenilworth Castle, Scene of Scott’s Famous Novel. 


























620 


SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


gude ! Nae doubt, nae doubt! It’s our duty to 
submit! But, O dear ! My poor Steenie ! the 
pride o’ my very heart, that was sae handsome and 
comely; and a help to his family and a comfort 
to us a’, and a pleasure to a’ that lookit on him ! 
O my bairn ! my bairn ! my bairn ! what for is 
thou lying there ? and eh ! what for am I left to 
greet for ye ! ” 

There was no contending with this burst of 
sorrow and natural affection. Oldbuck had re¬ 
course to his snuff-box to conceal the tears which, 
despite his caustic temper, were apt to start on 
such occasions. The female attendants whispered, 
and the men held their bonnets to their faces, and 
spoke apart with each other. .... 

Mr. Oldbuck observed to the clergyman that it 
was time to proceed with the ceremony. The 
father was incapable of giving directions, but the 
nearest relations of the family made a sign to the 
carpenter—who in such cases goes through the 
duty of the undertaker—to proceed with his office. 
The creak of the screw-nails presently announced 
that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was 
in the act of being secured above its tenant. 

The coffin, covered with a pall, and supported 
upon hand-spikes by the nearest relatives, now 
only awaited the father to support the head, as 


is customary. Two or three of these privileged 
persons spoke to him, but he answered only by 
shaking his hand and his head in token of refusal. 
With better intention than judgment the friends, 
who considered this an act of duty on the part of 
the living, and of decency towards the deceased, 
would have proceeded to enforce their request had 
not Oldbuck interfered between the distressed 
father and his well-meaning tormentors, and in¬ 
formed them that he himself, landlord and master 
to the deceased, would ‘‘ carry his head to the 
grave.” . ...... 

The sad procession now moved slowly forward, 
preceded by beadles or saulies, with their batons, 
miserable-looking old men, tottering as if on the 
edge of the grave to which they were marshalling 
another, and clad, according to Scottish guise, 
with threadbare black coats and hunting-caps dec¬ 
orated with rusty crape. The procession to the 
churchyard, at about half a mile distant, was made 
with the mournful solemnity usual on these occa¬ 
sions. The body was consigned to its parent 
earth; and when the labor of the grave-diggers 
had filled up the trench, and covered it with fresh 
sod, Mr. Oldbuck, taking his hat off, saluted the 
assistants, who had stood by in mournful silence, 
and with that adieu dispersed the mourners. 


-. 0 ^ 0 .- 

THE NECESSITY AND DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
From a Letter to His Son. 


S TCj] RELY upon it that you are now working t 
.Ea hard in the classical mine, getting out the 
rubbish as fast as you can, and preparing 
yourself to collect the ore. I can not too much 
impress upon your mind that Azeris the condition 
which God has imposed on us in every station of 
life,—there is nothing worth having that can be 
had without it, from the bread which the peasant 
wins with the sweat of his brow, to the sports by 
which the rich man must get rid of his ennui. 
The only difference betwixt them is, that the poor 
man labors to get a dinner to his appetite, the 
rich man to get an appetite to his dinner. As for 
knowledge, it can no more be planted in the 
human mind without labor than a field of wheat 


can be produced without the previous use of the 
plough. There is, indeed, this great difference, 
that chance or circumstances may so cause it that 
another shall reap what the farmer sows; but no 
man can be deprived, whether by accident or mis¬ 
fortune, of the fruits of his own studies; and the 
liberal and extended acquisitions of knowledge 
which he makes are all for his own use. Labor, 
my dear boy, therefore, and improve the time. 
In youth our steps are light, and our minds are 
ductile, and knowledge is easily laid up. But if 
we neglect our spring, our summer will be use¬ 
less and contemptible, our harvest will be chaff, 
and the winter of our old age unrespected and 
desolate. 








SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


621 


SIR WALTER RALEIGH SPREADS HIS CLOAK FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH. 

From “Kenilworth.” 


HEY were soon launched on the princely 
bosom of the broad Thames, upon which 
the sun now shone forth in all its splendor. 

“ There are two things scarce matched in the 
universe,” said Walter to Blount,—“the sun in 
heaven, and the Thames on the earth.” 

“The one will light us to Greenwich well 
enough,” said Blount, “ and the other would take 
us there a little faster if it were ebb tide.” 

“ And this is all thou think’st, all thou carest, 
all thou deem’st the use of the king of elements 
and the king of rivers,—to guide three such poor 
caitiffs as thyself and me and Tracy upon an idle 
journey of courtly ceremony ! ” 

“It is no errand of my seeking, faith!” re¬ 
plied Blount; “and I could excuse both the sun 
and the Thames the trouble of carrying me where 
I have no great mind to go, and where I expect 
but dog’s wages for my trouble. And by my 
honor,” he added, looking out from the head of 
the boat, “it seems to me as if our message were 
a sort of labor in vain ; for, see, the queen’s barge 
lies at the stairs, as if her majesty were about to 
take water.” 

It was even so. The royal barge, manned with 
the queen’s watermen richly attired in the regal 
liveries, and having the banner of England dis¬ 
played, did indeed lie at the great stairs which 
ascended from the river, and along with it two or 
three other boats for transporting such part of her 
retinue as were not in immediate attendance on 
the royal person. The yeomen of the guard—the 
tallest and most handsome men whom England 
could produce—guarded with their halberds the 
passage from the palace-gate to the river side, and 
all seemed in readiness for the queen’s coming 
forth, although the day was yet so early. 

“By my faith, this bodes us no good! ” said 
Blount; “it must be some perilous cause puts her 
grace in motion thus untimously. By my counsel, 
we were best put back again, and tell the earl 
what we have seen.” 

“Tell the earl what we have seen ! ” said Wal¬ 
ter; “why, what have we seen but a boat, and 
men with scarlet jerkins and halberds in their 



hands? Let us do his errand, and tell him what 
the queen says in reply.” 

So saying, he caused the boat to be pulled 
toward a landing-place at some distance from the 
principal one, which it would not at that moment 
have been thought respectful to approach, and 
jumped on shore, followed, though with reluc¬ 
tance, by his cautious and timid companions. As 
they approached the gate of the palace, one of the 
sergeant porters told them they could not at 
present enter, as her majesty was in the act of 
coming forth. The gentlemen used the name of 
the Earl of Sussex; but it proved no charm to 
subdue the officer, who alleged, in reply, that it 
was as much as his post was worth to disobey in 
the least tittle the commands which he had re¬ 
ceived. 

“ Nay, I told you as much before,” said 
Blount. “Do, I pray you, my dear Walter, let 
us take boat and return.” 

“ Not till I see the queen come forth,” returned 
the youth, composedly. 

“Thou art mad, stark mad, by the mass!” 
answered Blount. 

“And thou,” said Walter, “art turned coward 
of the sudden. I have seen thee face half a score 
of shag-headed Irish kernes to thy own share of 
them, and now thou wouldst blink and go back to 
shun the frown of a fair lady!” 

At this moment the gates opened, and ushers 
began to issue forth in array, preceded and flanked 
by the band of gentlemen pensioners. After this, 
amid a crowd of lords and ladies, yet so disposed 
around her that she could see and be seen on all 
sides, came Elizabeth herself, then in the prime 
of womanhood and in the full glow of what in a 
sovereign was called beauty, and what would in the 
lowest rank of life have been truly judged a noble 
figure, joined to a striking and commanding phys¬ 
iognomy. She leant on the arm of Lord Huns- 
don, whose relation to her by her mother’s side 
often procured him such distinguished marks of 
Elizabeth’s intimacy. 

The young cavalier we have so often mentioned 
had probably never yet approached so near the 








622 


SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


person of his sovereign ; and he pressed forward 
as far as the line of warders permitted, in order to 
avail himself of the present opportunity. His 
companion, on the contrary, kept pulling him 
backward, till Walter shook him off impatiently 
and let his rich cloak drop carelessly from one 
shoulder,—a natural action, which served, how¬ 
ever, to display to the best advantage his well-pro¬ 
portioned person. Unbonneting at the same time, 
he fixed his eager gaze on the queen’s approach 
with a mixture of respectful curiosity and modest 
yet ardent admiration, which suited so well with 
his fine features, that the warders, struck with his 
rich attire and noble countenance, suffered him to 
approach the ground over which the queen was to 
pass somewhat closer than was permitted to ordi¬ 
nary spectators. Thus the adventurous youth stood 
full in Elizabeth’s eye,—an eye never indifferent 
to the admiration which she deservedly excited 
among her subjects, or to the fair proportions of 
external form which chanced to distinguish any 
of her courtiers. Accordingly, she fixed her keen 
glance on the youth, as she approached the place 
where he stood, with a look in which surprise at 
his boldness seemed to be unmingled with resent¬ 
ment, while a trifling accident happened which 
attracted her attention toward him yet more 
strongly. The night had been rainy, and just 
where the young gentleman stood a small quantity 
of mud interrupted the queen’s passage. As she 
hesitated to pass on, the gallant, throwing his 
cloak from his shoulders, laid it on the miry spot, 
so as to insure her stepping over it dry-shod. 
Elizabeth looked at the young man, who accom¬ 
panied this act of devoted courtesy with a pro¬ 
found reverence and a blush that overspread his 
whole countenance. The queen was confused, 
and blushed in her turn, nodded her head, hastily 
passed on, and embarked in her barge without 
saying a word. 

“Come along, sir coxbomb,” said Blount; 
“ your gay cloak will need the brush to-day, I 
wot. Nay, if you had meant to make a footcloth 
of your mantle, better have kept Tracy’s old drab- 
de-bure, which despises all colors.” 

“ This cloak,” said the youth, taking it up and 
folding it, “shall never be brushed while in my 
possession.” 


“And that will not be long; if you learn not a 
little more economy, we shall have you in cuerpo 
soon, as the Spaniard says.” 

Their discourse was here interrupted by one of 
the band of pensioners. 

“I was sent,” said he, after looking at them 
attentively, “ to a gentleman who hath no cloak, 
or a muddy one. You, sir, I think,” addressing 
the young cavalier, “ are the man ; you will please 
to follow me.” 

“He is in attendance on me,” said Blount; 
“ on me, the noble Earl of Sussex’s master of 
horse. ” 

“I have nothing to say to that,” answered the 
messenger; “my orders are directly from her 
majesty, and concern this gentleman only.” 

So saying, he walked away, followed by Walter, 
leaving the others behind,—Blount’s eyes almost 
starting from his head with the excess of his aston¬ 
ishment. At length he gave vent to it in an ex¬ 
clamation,—“Who the good jere would have 
thought this?”—and, shaking his head with a 
mysterious air, he walked to his own boat, em¬ 
barked, and returned to Deptford. 

The young cavalier was, in the meanwhile, 
guided to the water-side by the pensioner, who 
showed him considerable respect,—a circumstance 
which, to persons in his situation, may be con¬ 
sidered as an augury of no small consequence. 
He ushered him into one of the wherries which 
lay ready to attend the queen’s barge, which was 
already proceeding up the river with the advan¬ 
tage of that flood-tide of which, in the course of 
their descent, Blount had complained to his asso¬ 
ciates. 

The two rowers used their oars with such expe¬ 
dition, at the signal of the gentleman pensioner, 
that they very soon brought their little skiff under 
the stern of the queen’s boat, where she sat be¬ 
neath an awning, attended by two or three ladies 
and the nobles of her household. She looked 
more than once at the wherry in which the young 
adventurer was seated, spoke to those around her, 
and seemed to laugh. At length, one of the at¬ 
tendants, by the queen’s order apparently, made a 
sign for the wherry to come alongside, and the 
young man was desired to step from his own skiff 
into the queen’s barge, which he performed wit! 




SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


623 


graceful agility at the forepart of the boat, and 
was brought aft to the queen’s presence,—the 
wherry at the same time dropping into the rear. 
The youth underwent the gaze of majesty not the 
less gracefully that his self-possession was mingled 
with embarrassment. The mudded cloak still 
hung upon his arm, and formed the natural topic 
with which the queen introduced the conversation. 

“ You have this day spoiled a gay mantle in our 
behalf, young man. We thank you for your ser¬ 
vice, though the manner of offering it was unusual, 
and something bold.” 

“In a sovereign’s need,” answered the youth, 
“ it is each liegeman’s duty to be bold.” 

“ That was well said, my lord !” said the queen, 
turning to a grave person who sat by her, and 
answered with a grave inclination of the head, 
and something of a mumbled assent. “Well, 
young man, your gallantry shall not go unre¬ 
warded. Go to the wardrobe-keeper, and he 
shall have orders to supply the suit which you 
have cast away in our service. Thou shalt have a 
suit, and that of the newest cut, I promise thee, 
on the word of a princess.” 

“May it please your grace,” said Walter, hesi¬ 
tating, “ it is not for so humble a servant of your 
majesty to measure out your bounties; but if it 
became me to choose ”- 

“Thou wouldst have gold, I warrant me,” said 


the queen, interrupting him; “fie, young man ! 
I take shame to say that, in our capital, such and 
so various are the means of thriftless folly, to give 
gold to youth is giving fuel to fire, and furnishing 
them with the means of self-destruction. If I live 
and reign, these means of unchristian excess shall 
be abridged. Yet thou mayest be poor,” she 

added, “or thy parents may be- It shall be 

gold, if thou wilt; but thou shalt answer to me 
for the use on ’t.” 

Walter waited patiently until the queen had 
done, and then modestly assured her that gold 
was still less in his wish than the raiment her 
majesty had before offered. 

“ How, boy ! ” said the queen ; “ neither gold 
nor garment? What is it thou wouldst have of 
me, then ? ’ ’ 

“ Only permission, madam,—if it is not asking 
too high an honor,—permission to wear the cloak 
which did you this trifling service.” 

“ Permission to wear thine own cloak, thou 
silly boy !” said the queen. 

“ It is no longer mine,” said Walter ; “when 
your majesty’s foot touched it, it became a mantle 
fit for a prince, but far too rich a one for its 
former owner.” 

The queen again blushed, and endeavored to 
cover, by laughing, a slight degree of not unpleas¬ 
ing surprise and confusion. 


- 


THE STORMING OF FRONT-DE-BGEUF’S CASTLE. 

From “Ivanhoe.” 


ND I must lie here like a bed-ridden monk, 
exclaimed Ivanhoe, “ while the game that 
gives me freedom or death is played out 
by the hands of others! Look from the window 
once again, kind maiden, but beware that you 
are not marked by the archers beneath. Look 
out once more, and tell me if they yet advance to 
the storm.” 

With patient courage, strengthened by the inter¬ 
val she had employed in mental devotion, Rebecca 
again took post at the lattice, sheltering herself, 
however, so as not to be visible from beneath. 

“What dost thou see, Rebecca?” again de¬ 
manded the wounded knight. 



“ Nothing but the cloud of arrows flying so 
thick as to dazzle mine eyes, and to hide the bow¬ 
men who shoot them.” 

“That can not endure,” said Ivanhoe; “if 
they press not right on to carry the castle by pure 
force of arms, the archery may avail but little 
against stone walls and bulwarks. Look for the 
Knight of the Fetterlock, fair Rebecca, and see 
how he bears himself; for as the leader is so will 
the followers be.” 

“ I see him not,” said Rebecca. 

“ Foul craven ! ” exclaimed Ivanhoe ; “ does 
he blench from the helm when the wind blows 
highest ? ” 














624 


SIR WALTER SCOTT. 


“ He blenches not! he blenches not!” said 
Rebecca; “I see him now; he leads a body of 
men close under the outer barrier of the barbican. 
They pull down the piles and palisades, they hew 
down the barriers with axes. His high black 
plume floats abroad over the throng like a raven 
over the field of the slain. They have made a 
breach in the barriers—they rush on—they are 
thrust back!—Front-de-Bceuf heads the de¬ 

fenders; I see his gigantic form above the press. 
—They throng again to the breach, and the pass is 
disputed hand to hand and man to man. God of 
Jacob ! it is the meeting of two fierce tides—the 
conflict of two oceans moved by adverse winds ! ” 
She turned her head from the lattice as if 
unable longer to endure a sight so terrible. 

‘‘Look forth again, Rebecca,” said Ivanhoe, 
mistaking the cause of her retiring; “ the archery 
must in some degree have ceased, since they are 
now fighting hand to hand. Look again ; there 
is now less danger.” 

Rebecca again looked forth and almost imme¬ 
diately exclaimed—“ Holy Prophets of the Law ! 
Front-de-Bceuf and the Black Knight fight hand 
to hand in the breach amid the roar of their 
followers, who watch the progress of the strife. 
Heaven strike with those who strike for the cause 
of the oppressed and the captive! ” She then 
uttered a loud shriek, and exclaimed—“He is 
down ! he is down ! ” 

“Who is down?” cried Ivanhoe; “for our 
dear Lady’s sake, tell me which has fallen ? ” 
“The Black Knight,” answered Rebecca, 
faintly ; then instantly again shouted with joyful 
eagerness—“ But no—but no! the name of the 
Lord of Hosts be blessed ! he is on foot again, 
and fights as if there were twenty men’s strength 
in his single arm. His sword is broken—he 
snatches an axe from a yeoman—he presses Front- 
de-Bceuf with blow on blow. The giant stoops 
and totters like an oak under the steel of the 
woodman—he falls—he falls ! ” 

“ Front-de-Bceuf? ” exclaimed Ivanhoe. 

“ Front-de-Boeuf! ” answered the Jewess. “ His 
men rush to the rescue, headed by the haughty 
Templar; their united force compels the champion 
pause. They drag Front-de-Boeuf within the 
walls. ’ ’ 


“The assailants have won the barriers, have 
they not ? ” said Ivanhoe. 

“ They have—they have ! ” exclaimed Rebecca; 
“ and they press the besieged hard upon the outer 
wall. Some plant ladders, some swarm like bees, 
and endeavor to ascend upon the shoulders of 
each other. . . Down go stones, beams, and 

trunks of trees upon their heads; and as fast as they 
bear the wounded to the rear, fresh men supply 
their places in the assault. Great God ! hast thou 
given men thine own image that it should be thus 
cruelly defaced by the hands of their brethren ! ” 

“Think not of that,” said Ivanhoe, “this is 
no time for such thoughts. Who yield ? Who 
push them away ? ’ ’ 

“The ladders are thrown down,” replied 
Rebecca, shuddering; “ the soldiers lie groveling 
under them like crushed reptiles. The besieged 
have the better.” 

“ Saint George strike for us ! ” exclaimed the 
knight. “ Do the false yeomen give way ? ” 

“ No ! ” exclaimed Rebecca; “ they bear them¬ 
selves right yeomanly. The Black Knight ap¬ 
proaches the postern with his huge axe—the 
thundering blows which he deals you may hear 
above all the din and shouts of the battle. Stones 
and beams are hailed down upon the bold cham¬ 
pion—he regards them no more than if they were 
thistledown or feathers.” 

“ By Saint Joan of Acre,” said Ivanhoe, raising 
himself joyfully on his couch, “ methought there 
was but one man in England that might do such 
a deed ! ” 

“The postern gate shakes,’’continued Rebecca; 
“it crashes—it is splintered by his blows; they 
rush in—the out-work is won. O God ! they hurl 
the defenders from the battlements—they throw 
them into the moat ! O men,—if indeed ye be 
men,—spare them that can resist no longer ! ” 

“ The bridge—the bridge which communicates 
with the castle—have they won that pass?” ex¬ 
claimed Ivanhoe. 

“No,” replied Rebecca, “the Templar has 
destroyed the plank on which they crossed. Few 
of the defenders escaped with him into the castle; 
the shrieks and the cries which you hear tell the 
fate of the others. Alas ! I see it is still more 
difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.” 









THE GREATEST ENGLISH NOVELIST. 


E HAS not only pleased us—he has softened the hearts of a whole 
generation. He made charity fashionable ; he awakened pity in 
the hearts of sixty millions of people. He made a whole generation 
keep Christmas with acts of helpfulness to the poor; and every 
barefooted boy and girl in the streets of England and America 
to-day fares a little better, gets fewer cuffs and more pudding, 
because Charles Dickens wrote.” 

It may be questioned whether the benefit here described is greater to the poor 
or to those whose hearts have been taught to open to the call of suffering and 
distress ; but surely the man who has wrought this change, not by formal preaching, 
or lecturing, or scolding, but by the most delightful books ever written in any lan¬ 
guage,—certainly he may be counted one of the great forces in human progress. 

Charles Dickens was the son of a clerk in the English navy pay-office, a man 
of little ability and no means, whose family suffered by his improvidence, and whose 
portrait his son has drawn as Mr. Micawber. The father was finally confined for 
debt in the Marshalsea prison, and his family experienced the hardships of extreme 
poverty. Charles was employed between the ages of nine and eleven in pasting 
labels on blacking boxes, at which irksome occupation he earned six shillings a 
week. He began thus early to practise the art of composition, in so far, at least, as 
that name can be given to the making-up and telling of imaginative stories to his 
companions in the warehouse. A small legacy somewhat relieved the family, and 
Charles was sent to school. He was later engaged as a lawyer’s clerk, and after¬ 
ward acquired shorthand and became a reporter; first in the law courts, then of 
parliamentary debates, and finally for the newspaper press. 

In 1834 appeared Dickens’s first published sketch, “Mrs. Porter, Over the 
Way.” This was succeeded by others, with the signature, of “Boz,” the short- 
40 G35 
























626 


CHARLES DICKENS. 



ened form of a name given in sport to a younger brother, in allusion to the 
son of the Vicar of Wakefield: first “Moses,” it became “Boses,” and then 
“ Boz.” The sketches were well received, and at the end ot the year the editor 
of the Chronicle engaged him to continue them in that paper, where they attracted 
much attention. In 1836 they were published collectively in two volumes, illus¬ 
trated by Cruikshank. 

About this time, at the 
invitation of Chapman and 
Hall, Dickens began writing 
“ The Posthumous Papers of 
the Pickwick Club.” 

The first numbers were 
not successful, but the appear¬ 
ance of Sam Weller gained 
many readers, and the author 
was soon the most popular 
writer of the day. Before 
the completion of “ Pickwick,” 
“Oliver Twist” was begun in 
Bentley's Magazine . “Pick¬ 
wick ” appeared in book form 
in 1837, “Oliver Twist” in 
1838, and “Nicholas Nickle- 
by ” in 1839. Under the gen¬ 
eral title of “ Master Hum¬ 
phrey’s Clock,” “The Old 
Curiosity Shop ” and “ Barna- 
by Rudge ” were published 
in monthly numbers in 1840 
and 1841. 

For forty-three years 
from the appearance of “ Pick¬ 
wick ” there was no cessation 
hi the literary activity of 
Dickens. His visit to America 
in 1843 was followed by the 
publication of his “ American 
Notes,” which held up to ridi- 
Birthplace of Dickens, Portsmouth, England. Cllle the manners and customs 

of the Americans in such a 
way as to alienate many of his admirers in this country. “ Martin Chuzzlewit,” 
published a year later, contains more of the same criticism. In 1843 appeared 
the “Christmas Carol,” the first of the series of delightful stories adapted to 
that time of peace and good-will, the remaining ones being “The Chimes,” 
“The Cricket on the Hearth,” and “The Haunted Man,” written at intervals 
up to 1848. 




































CHARLES DICKENS. 


627 


In 1845 the Daily News was started under the editorial auspices of Dickens, 
and to its columns he contributed the sketches called “ Pictures of Italy.” But 
the position was not congenial to his tastes, and he soon withdrew from it and 
returned to his own loved walk. “ Dombey and Son,” the story of a purse-proud 
merchant, appeared in 1847 J “David Copperfield,” depicting the career of a young 
literary man struggling up to fame, in 1849 ; “Bleak House,” founded on the mis¬ 
eries of a suit in Chancery, in 1853 ; “ Little Dorritt,” the story of a young girl's 
devotion to a father in prison for debt, in 1856; “A Tale of Two Cities,” in 1859 ; 
“Great Expectations,” in 1861 ; and “Our Mutual Friend,” in 1865. In 1850 he 
started Household Words , a weekly periodical, which was enriched by the contribu¬ 
tions of some of the ablest writers of the day, and which was brought to a con- 



Gadshill, the Home of Charles Dickens. 


elusion in 1859. The next year succeeded All the Year Round , similar in plan 
and form. A number of Christmas stories were written in collaboration with 
others,and “Our Mutual Friend” was printed in 1865. He had begun “The Mys¬ 
tery of Edwin Drood,” which was being published in serial form, when he died at his 

home, Gadshill Place, in 1870. . 

Besides the more important works which have been mentioned, Dickens con¬ 
tributed to the magazines a great number of stories and sketches. About twelve 
years before his death he began to give public readings in London. They gave 
such erreat satisfaction to the immense audiences by which they were greeted, and 
were a source of so great profit to him, that they were continued in all the leading 
cities of England, and during a visit to America in 1868. 













628 


CHARLES DICKENS. 




No man has ever ministered more to the delighted pleasure of his friends than 
did Charles Dickens. He delighted in entertaining his intimates at Gadshill, and 
the stories of the unconventional, happy times that there transpired are both num¬ 
erous and enjoyable. He has rarely been equaled as an after-dinner speaker, and 
he took the greatest pleasure in acting upon the amateur stage, in plays of his own 
composition. Probably no other author, except Shakespeare, has created so large 
a number of characters universally known, and symbolizing some definite human 
frailty or human virtue. Pickwick, Micawber, Captain Cuttle, Peggoty, Little Nell, 
Uriah Heep, Mr. Dick, Barkis, Little Em’ly, Paul Dombey—how much we would 
miss were these and the others who live in the pages of Dickens to drop out of 
our life. It is this large place filled by the children of his genius in the thought 
and feeling of the world that justifies the title we have given him,—the Greatest 
English Novelist. 

o 





BARDELL versus PICKWICK. 
From “Pickwick Papers.” 


ERJEANT BUZFUZ now rose with more 
importance than he had ever exhibited, if 
that were possible, and vociferated, “ Call 
Samuel Weller.” 

It was quite unnecessary to call Samuel Weller; 
for Samuel Weller stepped briskly into the box the 
instant his name was pronounced; and, placing 
his hat on the floor, and his arms on the rail, took 
a bird’s-eye view of the bar, and a comprehensive 
survey of the bench, with a remarkably cheerful 
and lively aspect. 

“ What’s your name, sir? ” inquired the judge. 

“ Sam Weller, my lord,” replied that gentleman. 

“ Do you spell it with a ‘V ’ or a ‘ W ’ ? ” in¬ 
quired the judge. 

“ That depends upon the taste and fancy of the 
speller, my lord,” replied Sam. “I never had 
occasion to spell it more than once or twice in my 
life; but I spells it with a * V.’ ” 

Here a voice in the gallery exclaimed aloud, 
“ Quite right, too, Samevil,—quite right. Put it 
down a we, my lord ; put it down a we.” 

“ Who is that, who dares to address the court ? ” 
said the little judge, looking up. “ Usher ! ” 

“ Yes, my lord.” 

“Bring that person here instantly.” 

“Yes, my lord.” 


But as the usher didn’t find the person, he 
did n’t bring him ; and, after a great commotion, 
all the people who had got up to look for the cul¬ 
prit, sat down again. The little judge turned to 
the witness as soon as his indignation would allow 
him to speak, and said, “ Do you know who that 
was, sir ? ” 

“ I rayther suspect it was my father, my lord,” 
replied Sam. 

“ Do you see him here now? ” said the judge. 

“ No, I don’t, my lord,” replied Sam, staring 
right up into the lantern in the roof of the court. 

“ If you could have pointed him out, I would 
have committed him instantly,” said the judge. 

Sam bowed his acknowledgments, and turned 
with unimpaired cheerfulness of countenance 
towards Serjeant Buzfuz. 

“ Now, Mr. Weller,” said Serjeant Buzfuz. 

“Now, sir,” replied Sam. 

“ I believe you are in the service of Mr. Pick¬ 
wick, the defendant in this case. Speak up, if 
you please, Mr. Weller.” 

“ I mean to speak up, sir,” replied Sam. “I 
am in the service of that ’ere gen’l’m’n, and a 
wery good service it is.” 

“Little to do, and plenty to get, I suppose?” 
said Serjeant Buzfuz, with jocularity. 















CHARLES DICKENS. 


“ O, quite enough to get, sir, as the soldier said 
veil they ordered him three hundred and fifty 
lashes,” replied Sam. 

You must not tell us what the soldier, or any 
other man said, sir,” interposed the judge; “ it’s 
not evidence.” 

“ Wery good, my lord,” replied Sam. 

“Do you recollect anything particular hap¬ 
pening on the morning when you were first 
engaged by the defendant; eh, Mr. Weller?” 
said Serjeant Buzfuz. 

“Yes, I do, sir,” replied Sam. 

“Have the goodness to tell the jury what 
it was.” 

“ I had a reg’ler new fit-out o’ clothes that 
mornin’, genTm’n of the jury,” said Sam; 

“ and that was a wery partickler and uncom¬ 
mon circumstance with me in those days.” 

Hereupon there was a general laugh; and 
the little judge, looking with an angry count¬ 
enance over his desk, said, “You had better 
be careful, sir.” 

“ So Mr. Pickwick said at the time, my 
lord,” replied Sam; “ and I was wery careful 
o’ that ’ere suit o’ clothes,—wery careful in¬ 
deed, my lord.” 

The judge looked sternly at Sam for full two 
minutes; but Sam’s features were so perfectly 
calm and serene that the judge said nothing, 
and motioned Serjeant Buzfuz to proceed. 

“ Do you mean to tell me, Mr.Weller,” said 
Serjeant Buzfuz, folding his arms emphatically, 
and turning half round to the jury, as if in 
mute assurance that he would bother the wit¬ 
ness yet—“ do you mean to tell me, Mr. Weller, 
that you saw nothing of this fainting on the 
part of the plaintiff in the arms of the defend¬ 
ant, which you have heard described by the 
witnesses? ” 

“ Certainly not,” replied Sam. “ I was in 
the passage till they called me up, and then the 
old lady was not there.” 

“ Now, attend, Mr. Weller,” said Serjeant Buz¬ 
fuz, dipping a large pen into the inkstand before 
him, for the purpose of frightening Sam with a 
show of taking down his answer. “You were in 
the passage, and yet saw nothing of what was 


629 

going forward. Have you a pair of eyes, Mr. 
Weller ? ” 

“Yes, I have a pair of eyes,” replied Sam; 
“ and that’s just it. If they was a pair o’ patent 
double-million magnifyin’ gas microscopes of 
hextra power, p’r’aps I might be able so see 



through a flight o’ stairs and a deal door; but 
bein’ only eyes, you see my wision’s limited.” 

At this answer, which was delivered without the 
slightest appearance of irritation, and with the 
most complete simplicity and equanimity of man¬ 
ner, the spectators tittered, the little judge smiled, 
and Serjeant Buzfuz looked particularly foolish. 







630 


CHARLES DICKENS. 


After a short consultation with Dodson and Fogg, 
the learned Serjeant again turned toward Sara, 
and said, with a painful effort to conceal his vexa¬ 
tion, “Now, Mr. Weller, I’ll ask you a question 
on another point, if you please.” 

“ If you please, sir,” said Sara, with the 
utmost good humor. 

“ Do you remember going up to Mrs. Bardell’s 
house one night in November last ? ” 

“ O, yes, wery well.” 

“ O, you do remember that, Mr. Weller,” said 
Serjeant Buzfuz, recovering his spirits; “I 
thought we should get at something at last.” 

“ I rayther thought that, too, sir,” replied Sam ; 
and at this the spectators tittered again. 

“ Well, I suppose you went up to have a little 
talk about this trial,—eh, Mr. Weller? ” said Ser¬ 
jeant Buzfuz, looking knowingly at the jury. 

“ I went up to pay the rent; but we did get a 
talkin’ about the trial,” replied Sam. 

“ O, you did get a talking about the trial,” 
said Serjeant Buzfuz, brightening up with the an¬ 
ticipation of some important discovery. “ Now, 
what passed about the trial ? Will you have the 
goodness to tell us, Mr. Weller ? ” 

“ Vith all the pleasure in life, sir,” replied Sam. 
“ Arter a few unimportant observations from the 
two wirtuous females as has been examined here 
to-day, the ladies gets into a wery great state o’ 
admiration at the honorable conduct of Mr. Dod¬ 
son and Fogg,—them two gen’l’m’n as is settin’ 
near you now.” This of course drew general 


attention to Dodson and Fogg, who looked as 
virtuous as possible. 

“ The attorneys for the plaintiff,” said Mr. Ser¬ 
jeant Buzfuz. “Well, they spoke in high praise 
of the honorable conduct of Messrs. Dodson and 
Fogg, the attorneys for the plaintiff, did they?” 

“Yes,” said Sam; “they said what a wery 
gen’rous thing it was o’ them to have taken up the 
case on spec, and to charge nothin’ at all for costs, 
unless they got ’em out of Mr. Pickwick.” 

At this very unexpected reply the spectators 
tittered again, and Dodson and Fogg, turning very 
red, leant over to Serjeant Buzfuz, and in a hur¬ 
ried manner whispered something in his ear. 

“You are quite right,” said Serjeant Buzfuz 
aloud, with affected composure. “It’s perfectly 
useless, my lord, attempting to get at any evidence 
through the impenetrable stupidity of this witness. 
I will not trouble the court by asking him any 
more questions. Stand down, sir.” 

“Would any other gen’l’m’n like to ask me 
anythin’ ? ” inquired Sam, taking up his hat, and 
looking around most deliberately. 

“ Not I, Mr. Weller, thank you,” said Serjeant 
Snubbin, laughing. 

“You may go down, sir,” said Serjeant Buzfuz, 
waving his hand impatiently. Sam went down 
accordingly, after doing Messrs. Dodson and 
Fogg’s case as much harm as he conveniently 
could, and saying just as little respecting Mr. 
Pickwick as might be, which was precisely the 
object he had had in view all along. 




•0^0* 


THROUGH THE STORM. 
From “David Copperfield.” 


N the difficulty of hearing anything but 
wind and waves, and in the crowd, and 
the unspeakable confusion, and my first 


breathless efforts to stand against the weather, I 
was so confused that I looked out to sea for the 
wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of 
the great waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing 
next me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattooed 
arrow on it pointing in the same direction) to 
the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it close in 
upon 11s! 


One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet 
from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in 
a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as 
the ship rolled and beat—which she did without 
a moment’s pause, and with a violence quite incon¬ 
ceivable—beat the side as if it would stave it in. 
Some efforts were even then being made to cut 
this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, 
which was broadside on, turned toward us in her 
rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with 
axes, especially one active figure with long, curling 


12 












CHARLES DICKENS. 




hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great 
cry, which was audible even above the wind and 
water, rose from the shore at this moment; the 
sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean 
breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bul¬ 
warks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge. 
The second mast was yet standing, with the 
rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of 
broken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship 
had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely 
said in my ear, and then lifted in and struck 
again. I understood him to add that she was 
parting amidships, and I could readily suppose 
so, for the rolling and beating were too tre¬ 
mendous for any human work to suffer long. 

As he spoke, there was another great cry of 
pity from the beach; four men arose with the 
wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging 
of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active 
figure with the curling hair. 

There was a bell on board; and as the ship 
rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature 
driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep 
of her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends 
toward the shore, now nothing but her keel, 
as she sprang wildly over and turned toward 
the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell 
of those unhappy men, was borne toward us 
on the wind. Again we lost her, and again 
she rose. Two men were gone. The agony 
onshore increased. Men groaned, and clasped 
their hands; women shrieked, and turned away 
their faces. Some ran wildly up and down 
along the beach, crying for help where no help 
could be. I found myself one of these, fran¬ 
tically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew 
not to let those two lost creatures perish before 
our eyes. They were making out to me, in an 
agitated way—I don’t know how, for the little 
I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to 
understand—that the life-boat had been bravely 
manned an hour ago, and could do nothing; 
and that as no man would be so desperate as 
to attempt to wade off with a rope and estab¬ 
lish a communication with the shore, there was 
nothing left to try; when I noticed that some 
new sensation moved the people on the beach, 


and saw them part, and Ham come breaking 
through them to the front. 

I ran to him—as well as I know, to repeat my 
appeal for help. But, distracted though I was, by 
a sight so new and terrible, the determination in 
his face, and his look out to sea—exactly the same 


Captain Cuttle. 

:ad been a pilot, or a skipper, or a privateer’s-man, or all three 
perhaps ; and was a very salt looking man indeed.” 

look as I remembered in connection with the 
morning after Emily’s flight—awoke me to a 
knowledge of his danger. I held him back with 
both arms, and implored the men with whom 
I had been speaking not to listen to him, not 






CHARLES DICKENS. 


632 

to do murder, not to let him stir from off 
that sand ! 

Another cry arose on shore ; and looking to the 
wreck, we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, 
beat off the lower of the two men, and fly up in 
triumph round the active figure left alone upon 
the mast. 

Against such a sight, and against such determi¬ 
nation as that of the calmly desperate man who 
was already accustomed to lead half the people 
present, I might as hopefully have entreated the 
wind. “ Mas’r Davy,” he said, cheerily grasping 
me by both hands, “if my time is come, ’tis 
come. If ’tan’t, I’ll bide it. Lord above bless 
you, and bless all ! Mates, make me ready ! I’m 
a-going off! ” 

Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the 
silence of suspended breath behind him, and the 
storm before, until there was a great retiring 
wave, when, with a backward glance at those who 
held the rope which was made fast round his body, 
he dashed in after it, and in a moment was buffet¬ 
ing with the water; rising with the hills, falling 
with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then 
drawn again to land. They hauled in hastily. 

He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from 
where I stood ; but he took no thought of that. 
He seemed .hurriedly to give them some directions 
for leaving him more free—or so I judged from 
the motion of his arm—and was gone as before. 

And now he made for the wreck, rising with 
the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the 
ragged foam, borne in toward the shore, borne 
on toward the ship, striving hard and valiantly. 
The distance was nothing, but the power of the 
sea and wind made the strife deadly. At length 
he neared the wreck. He was so near that with 
one more of his vigorous strokes he would be 
clinging to it—when, a high, green, vast hillside 
of water, moving in shoreward from beyond the 
ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty 
bound, and the ship was gone ! 

Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if 
a mere cask had been broken, in running to the 
spot where they were hauling in. Consternation 
was in every face. They drew him to my very 
feet—insensible—dead. He was carried to the 


nearest house; and—no one prevented me now— 
I remained near him, busy ; while every means of 
restoration was tried; but he had been beaten to 
death by the great wave, and his generous heart 
was stilled forever. 

As I sat beside the bed when hope was aban¬ 
doned and all was done, a fisherman, who had 
known me when Emily and I were children, and 
ever since, whispered my name at the door. 

“Sir,” said he, with tears starting to his 
weather-beaten face, which, with his trembling 
lips, was ashy pale, “will you come over yon¬ 
der?” 

The old remembrance that had been recalled 
to me was in his look. I asked him, terror- 
stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to sup¬ 
port me: 

“ Has a body come ashore? ” 

He said, “ Yes.” 

“ Do I know it ? ” I asked then. 

He answered nothing. 

But he led me to the shore. And on that part 
of it where she and I had looked for shells, two 
children—on that part of it where some lighter 
fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, 
had been scattered by the wind—among the ruins 
of the home he had wronged—I saw him lying 
with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen 
him lie at school. 

No need, O Steerforth, to have said, when we 
last spoke together, in that hour which I so little 
deemed to be our parting hour—no need to have 
said, “Think of me at my best! ” I had done 
that ever; and could I change now, looking on 
this sight! They brought a hand-bier, and laid 
him on it, and covered him with a flag, and took 
him up and bore him on toward the house. All 
the men who carried him had known him, and 
gone sailing with him, and seen him merry and 
bold. They carried him through the wild roar, 
a hush in the midst of the tumult; and took him 
to the cottage where Death was already. But 
when they set the bier down on the threshold, 
they looked at one another, and at me, and 
whispered. I know why. They felt as if it were 
not right to lay him down in the same quiet 
room. 




CHARLES DICKENS. 


6 33 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE NELL. 

From “The Old Curiosity Shop.” 


HE was dead. No sleep so beautiful and 
calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to 
look upon. She seemed a creature fresh 
from the hand of God, and waiting for the breath 
of life; not one who had lived and suffered 
death. 

Her couch was dressed with here and there some 
winter berries and green leaves, gathered in a spot 
she had been used to favor. “ When I die, put 


ness were born,—imaged in her tranquil beauty 
and profound repose. 

And still her former self lay there, unaltered in 
this change. Yes. The old fireside had smiled 
upon that same sweet face ; it had passed like a 
dream through haunts of misery and care; at the 
door of the poor schoolmaster on the summer 
evening, before the furnace-fire upon the cold v/et 
night, at the still bedside of the dying boy, there 




Dickens’ “Old Curiosity Shop.” 


near me something that has loved the light and 
had the sky above it always.” Those were her 

words. 

She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble 
Nell was dead. Her little bird—a poor slight 
thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed 
—was stirring nimbly in its cage; and the strong 
heart of its child-mistress was mute and motionless 
forever. 

Where were the traces of her early cares, her 
sufferings and fatigues? All gone. Sorrow was 
dead indeed in her ; but peace and perfect happi- 


had been the same mild, lovely look. So shall we 
know the angels in their majesty, after death. 

The old man held one languid arm in his, and 
had the small hand tight folded to his breast, for 
warmth. It was the hand she had stretched out 
to him with her last smile,—the hand that had 
led him on through all their wanderings. Ever 
and anon he pressed it to his lips; then hugged 
it to his breast again, murmuring that it was 
warmer now; and as he said it, he looked, in 
agony, to those who stood around, as if imploring 
them to help her. 































634 


CHARLES DICKENS. 


She was dead, and past all help, or need of it. 
The ancient rooms she had seemed to fill with 
life, even while her own was waning fast,—the 
garden she had tended,—the eyes she had glad¬ 
dened,—the noiseless haunts of many a thoughtful 
hour,—the paths she had trodden as it were but 
yesterday,—could know her no more. 

“It is not,” said the schoolmaster, as he bent 
down to kiss her on the cheek, and gave his tears 
free vent, “it is not on earth that Heaven’s jus¬ 
tice ends. Think what it is compared with the 
World to which her young spirit has winged its 
early flight, and say, if one deliberate wish ex¬ 
pressed in solemn terms above this bed could call 
her back to life, which of us would utter it! ” 

When morning came, and they could speak 
more calmly on the subject of their grief, they 
heard how her life had closed. 

She had been dead two days. They were all 
about her at the time, knowing that the end was 
drawing on. She died soon after daybreak. 
They had read and talked to her in the earlier 
portion of the night; but, as the hours crept on, 
she sunk to sleep. They could tell, by what she 
faintly uttered in her dreams, that they were of 
her journeyings with the old man : they were of 
no painful scenes, but of those who had helped 
and used them kindly; for she often said, “ God 
bless you ! ” with great fervor. Waking, she 
never wandered in her mind but once, and that 
was at beautiful music which she said was in the 
air. God knows. It may have been. 

Opening her eyes at last, from a very quiet 
sleep, she begged that they would kiss her once 
again. That done, she turned to the old man 
with a lovely smile upon her face,—such, they 
said, as they had never seen, and never could for¬ 
get,—and clung with both her arms about his 
neck. They did not know that she was dead, at 
first.' 

She had never murmured or complained, but, 
with a quiet mind, and manner quite unaltered,— 
save that she every day became more earnest and 
more grateful to them,—faded like the light upon 
a summer’s evening. 

The child who had been her little friend came 
there almost as soon as it was day, with an offer¬ 


ing of dried flowers which he begged them to lay 
upon her breast. It was he who had come to the 
window overnight and spoken to the sexton ; and 
they saw in the snow traces of small feet, where he 
had been lingering near the room in which she 
lay before he went to bed. He had a fancy, it 



Mr. Micawber. 

“ With a certain indescribable air of doing something genteel.” 


seemed, that they had left her there alone; and 
could not bear the thought. 

He told them of his dream again, and that it 
was of her being restored to them, just as she used 
to be. He begged hard to see her, saying that he 
would be very quiet, and that they need not fear 













CHARLES 

his being alarmed, for he had sat alone by his 
young brother all day long, when he was dead, 
and had felt glad to be so near him. They let 
him have his wish; and, indeed, he kept his 
word, and was in his childish way a lesson to 
them all. 

Up to that time the old man had not spoken 
once,—except to her,—or stirred from the bed¬ 
side. But when he saw her little favorite, he was 
moved as they had not seen him yet, and made as 
i though he would have him come nearer. Then, 
pointing to the bed, he burst into tears for the 
: first time ; and they who stood by, knowing that 
I the sight of this child had done him good, left 
them alone together. 

Soothing him with his artless talk of her, the 
child persuaded him to take some rest, to walk 
abroad, to do almost as he desired him. And when 
the day came on which they must remove her in 
her earthly shape from earthly eyes forever, he led 
him away, that he might not know when she was 
taken from him. They were to gather fresh 
leaves and berries for her bed. 

And now the bell—the bell she had so often 
heard by night and day, and listened to with 
! solemn pleasure almost as a living voice—rung its 
remorseless toll for her, so young, so beautiful, so 
good. Decrepit age, and vigorous life, and 
blooming youth, and helpless infancy, poured 
forth—on crutches, in the pride of strength and 
health, in the full blush of promise, in the mere 
dawn of life—to gather round her tomb. Old 
men were there, whose eyes were dim and senses 
failing—grandmothers, who might have died ten 
years ago, and still been old,—the deaf, the 
blind, the lame, the palsied, the living dead in 


DICKENS. 6^ 

many shapes and forms,—to see the closing of that 
early grave. 

Along the crowded path they bore her now,— 
pure as the newly fallen snow that covered it,— 
whose day on earth had been as fleeting. Under 
that porch, where she had sat when Heaven in its 
mercy brought her to that peaceful spot, she 
passed again, and the old church received her in 
its quiet shade. 

They carried her to. one old nook, where she 
• had many and many a time sat musing, and laid 
their burden softly on the pavement. The light 
streamed on it through the colored window,—a 
window where the boughs of trees were ever rust¬ 
ling in the summer, and where the birds sang 
sweetly all day long. With every breath of air 
that stirred among those branches in the sunshine, 
some trembling, changing light would fall upon 
her grave. 

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 
Many a young hand dropped in its little wreath, 
many a stifled sob was heard. Some—and they 
were not a few—knelt down. All w r ere sincere 
and truthful in their sorrow. 

They saw the vault covered and the stone fixed 
•down. Then, when the dusk of evening had come 
on, and not a sound disturbed the sacred stillness 
of the place,—when the bright moon poured in 
her light on tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, 
and arch, and, most of all (it seemed to them) 
upon her quiet grave,—in that calm time, when 
all outward things and inward thoughts teem with 
assurances of immortality, and worldly hopes and 
fears are humbled in the dust before them,—then, 
with tranquil and submissive hearts they turned 
away, and left the child with God. 




SAM WELLER’S VALENTINE. 
From “Pickwick Papers.” 


AM had unconsciously been a full hour and 
a half writing words in small text, smear¬ 
ing out wrong letters with his little finger, 
and putting in new ones which required going 
over very often to render them visible through the 
old blots, when he was roused by the opening of 


the door and the entrance of his parent. “Veil, 
Sammy,” said the father. “Veil, my Proosian 
Blue,” responded the son, laying down his 
pen. 

“Butwot’s that you’re a-doin’ of—pursuit of 
knowledge under difficulties—eh, Sammy? ” 












t 


CHARLES DICKENS. 





“ I’ve done now,” said Sam with slight embar¬ 
rassment ; “I’ve been a-writ in’.” 

“ So I see,” replied Mr. Weller. “ Not to any 
young ’ooman, I hope, Sammy.” 

“Why, it’s no use a-sayin’ it a’n’t,” replied 
Sam. “ It’s a walentine.” 

“A what! ” exclaimed Mr. Weller, apparently 
horror-stricken by the word. 

“A walentine,” replied Sam. 

“ Samivel, Samivel,” said Mr. Weller, in re¬ 
proachful accents, “I didn’t think you’d ha’ 
done it. Arter the warnin’ you’ve had o’ your 
father’s wicious propensities; arter all I’ve said to 
you upon this here wery subject; arter actiwally 
seein’ and bein’ in the company o’ your own 
mother-in-law, vich I should ha’ thought wos a 
moral lesson as no man could never ha’ forgotten 
to his dyin’ day ! I did n’t think you’d ha’ done 
it, Sammy, I did n’t think you’d ha’ done it! ” 

“Nonsense,” said Sam. “I a’n’t a-goin’ to 
get married, do n’t fret yourself about that. Order 
in your pipe, and I’ll read you the letter—there.” 

Sam dipped his pen into the ink to be ready 
for any corrections, and began with a very theat¬ 
rical air: “ ‘ Lovely ’ ”- 

“Stop,” said Mr. Weller, ringing the bell. 
“A double glass o’ the inwariable, my dear.” 

“ Very well, sir,” replied the girl; who with 
great quickness appeared, vanished, returned, and 
disappeared. 

“They seem to know your ways here,” observed 
Sam. 

“Yes,” replied his father, “I’ve been here 
before, in my time. Go on, Sammy.” 

“ ‘Lovely creetur,’ ” repeated Sam. 

“ Ta’n’t in poetry, is it ? ” interposed his father. 

“ No, no,” replied Sam. 

“Wery glad to hear it,” said Mr. Weller. 
“ Poetry’s unnat’ral; no man ever talked poetry 
’ceptabeadle on boxin’ day, or Warren’s blackin’, 
or Rowland’s oil, or some o’ them low fellows; 
never let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy. 
Begin ag’in, Sammy.” 

Mr. Weller resumed his pipe with critical so¬ 
lemnity, and Sam once more commenced, and 
read as follows: “ ‘ Lovely creetur i feel myself a 
damned-’ ” 


“That a’n’t proper,” said Mr. Weller, taking 
his pipe from his mouth. 

“ No; it a’n’t ‘damned,’” observed Sam, hold¬ 
ing the letter up to the light, “it’s ‘shamed,’ 
there’s a blot there—‘ 1 feel myself ashamed.’ ” 



Sam Weller. 

“We eats our biled mutton without capers, and don't care for 
horse-radish wen ve can get beef.” 

“Wery good,” said Mr. Weller. “Go on.” 

“ ‘ Feel myself ashamed, and completely cir-’ 

I forget what this here word is,” said Sam, scratch¬ 
ing his head with the pen, in vain attempts to 
remember. 

1 t 









CHARLES DICKENS. 


6 37 


“ Why don’t you look at it, then? ” inquired 
Mr. Weller. 

“So I a?n a-lookin’ at it,” replied Sam, “but 
there’s another blot. Here’s a c and a i and a d. 1 ' 

“ ‘ Circumwented,’ p’r’aps,” suggested Mr. 
Weller. 

“No, it a’n’t that,” said Sam; “‘circum¬ 
scribed’; that’s it.” 

“ That a’nT as good a word as circumwented, 
Sammy,” said Mr. Weller, gravely. 

“ Think not ? ” said Sam. 

“Nothin’ like it,” replied his father. 

“But don’t you think it means more?” in¬ 
quired Sam. 

“Veil, p’raps it is a more tenderer word,” said 
Mr. Weller, after a few moments’ reflection. 
“ Go on, Sammy.” 

“ ( Feel myself ashamed and completely circum¬ 
scribed in a dressin’ of you, for you are a nice 
gal and nothin’ but it.’ ” 

“That’s a wery pretty sentiment,” said the 
elder Mr. Weller, removing his pipe to make way 
for the remark. 

“Yes, I think it is rayther good,” observed 
Sam, highly flattered. 

“ Wot I like in that ’ere style of writin’,” said 
the elder Mr. Weller, “is that there a’n’t no 
callin’ names in it—no Wenuses, nor nothin’ o’ 
that kind. Wot’s the good o’ callin’ a young 
’ooman a Wenus or a angel, Sammy? ” 

“Ah ! what indeed ? ” replied Sam. 

“ You might jist as well call her a griffin, or a 
unicorn, or a King’s Arms at once, which is wery 
well known to be a collection of fabulous animals,” 
added Mr. Weller. 


“Just as well,” replied Sam. 

“Drive on, Sammy,” said Mr. Weller. 

Sam complied with the request, and proceeded 
as follows: “ ‘ Afore I see you I thought all women 
was alike.’ ” 

“So they are,” observed the elder Mr. Weller, 
parenthetically. 

“ ‘ But now,’ ” continued Sam, “ ‘ now I find 
what a reg’lar soft-headed, inkred’lous turnip I 
must ha’ been; for there a’n’t nobody like you 
though / like you better than nothin’ at all.’ T 
thought it best to make that rayther strong,” said 
Sam, looking up. Mr. Weller nodded approv¬ 
ingly, and Sam resumed. “ ‘ So I take the privi¬ 
lege of the day, Mary, my dear, to tell you that 
the first and only time I see you, your likeness was 
took on my h’art in much quicker time and 
brighter colors than ever a likeness was took by 
the profeel machine, altho’ it does finish a portrait 
and put the frame and glass on complete with a 
hook at the end to hang it up by, and all in two 
minutes and a quarter.’ ” 

“I am afeerd that werges on the poetical, 
Sammy,” said Mr. Weller, dubiously. 

“No, it don’t,” replied Sam, reading on very 
quickly to avoid contesting the point—“ ‘ Except 
of me, Mary, my dear, as your walentine, and 
think over what I’ve said.—My dear Mary I will 
now conclude.’ That’s all,” said Sam. 

“That’s rayther a sudden pull up, a’n’t it, 
Sammy? ” inquired Mr. Weller. 

“Not a bit on it,” said Sam; “she’ll wish 
there was more, and that’s the great art o’ letter- 
writin’.” 











WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 

THE GREAT HUMORIST AND NOVELIST. 

is long since England lost such a son,” wrote a distinguished 
critic, soon after the death of Thackeray. “ It will be long before 
she has such another to lose. He was indeed emphatically 
English,—English as distinct from Scotch, no less than English as 
distinct from Continental. The highest purely English novelist 
since Fielding, he combined Addison’s love of virtue with John¬ 
son’s hatred of cant; Horace Walpole’s lynx eye for the mean 
and the ridiculous, with the gentleness and wide charity for mankind, as a whole, 
of Goldsmith. He will be remembered in his due succession with these men for 
ages to come, as long as the hymn of praise rises in the old Abbey of'West¬ 
minster, and wherever the English tongue is native to men, from the banks of the 
Ganges to those of the Mississippi.” 

Thackeray’s father was a wealthy officer in the Indian service, and the great 
novelist was born in Calcutta in 1811. He was early sent to England, to be 
educated at the school of the Charter House, which he describes under the name 
of Greyfriars in his stories. He entered Cambridge, but coming into his prop¬ 
erty on the death of his father, he left college, and spent some time in Italy and 
Germany in the study of art, intending to become a painter. He never acquired 
any great degree of skill, but he was very apt in outline drawing, and made fre¬ 
quent use of this ability in illustrating his later work, especially his contributions 
to Punch. He invested most of his means in setting up a daily newspaper, The 
Constitutional, which lived a year and then disappeared, and with it all of Thackeray’s 
wealth. He probably counted this event a grave misfortune, but to it the world 
owes a great number of delightful sketches, and at least five of the most famous 
novels in the English language. He began to write for Fraser sMagazine under the 
names of “Michael Angelo Titmarsh” and “George Fitz-Boodle, Esq.,” and for 
Punch under the title “Fat Contributor.” To the latter he contributed the inimi¬ 
table “Jeames’s Diary” and “The Snob Papers.” “If satire could do aught to 
check the pride of the vulgar upstart, or shame social hypocrisy into truth and 
simplicity, these writings would accomplish the end.” 

Thackeray’s name now became known and his writings sought after. In 1846 
appeared his first, and perhaps greatest, novel, “ Vanity Fair,” which gave him 
rank at once as one of the greatest living writers of fiction. Nowhere is Thack- 

. • 638 



































WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 


6 39 


I 



eray's peculiar power more concentrated than in this novel, and the heroine—the 
cool “ woman of the world” Becky Sharp, an unprincipled governess, elbowing her 
way into fashionable life—will long remain the type of feminine intellect without 
virtue. In 1849 appeared “ Pendennis,” the hero of which is an accomplished, gen¬ 
tleman-like “man of 
the world,” without 
much moral principle 
to guide him. 

In 1851 Thack¬ 
eray delivered at 
“Willis’s Rooms” a 
course of six lectures 
on the “English Hu¬ 
morists of the Eigh¬ 
teenth Century,” com¬ 
mencing the course 
with Swift and ending 
with Goldsmith. All 
that was most brilliant 
in the capital was as¬ 
sembled to hear him. 
Amidst a throng of 
nobles and beauties 
and men of fashion 
were Carlyle and Ma¬ 
caulay, Hallam with 
his venerable head, 
and Charlotte Bronte, 
whose own fame was 
just at its height, and 
who saw in the lec¬ 
turer her ideal of an 
elevated and high- 
minded master of lit¬ 
erary art. The lec¬ 
tures were thoroughly 
appreciated. Every¬ 
body was delighted to 
see the great masters 
of English of a past 
age brought to life 
again in their habits 

as they lived, and endowed with the warm human reality of the lecturer’s Dobbins, 

and Warringtons, and Pendennises. 0 , 

Toward the close of 1852 appeared “Esmond, who introduces us to the 

society of Addison and Steele ; and after that Thackeray came over to our country 


Major Pendennis. 

















WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, 


640 

and delivered his lectures upon “ The Four Georges.” He was everywhere 
received with great enthusiasm, and his lectures were numerously attended, and 
elicited the warmest commendations. On his return, “The Newcomes” and “ I he 
Virginians ” appeared, and a new set of lectures on “The Four Georges.” In 
i860 he became the editor of the Cornhill Magazine, which rapidly attained a 
degree of success without example in English magazine literature. “ Lovel the 
Widower ” and “ The Adventures of Philip” appeared in its pages ; but they are 
not to be compared with his previous novels. The last of his published works was 
“Roundabout Papers,” consisting of twenty papers which appeared from time to 
time in the Cornhill , and in which are seen much of the irony, humor, and shrewd¬ 
ness of the author. Several of Thackeray’s best novels were published as serials, 
and he continued his connection with the magazines until within a short time of his 
death, which occurred in 1863 ; but he broke off his connection with Punch in 1854, 
apparently because he thought the tone of that humorous paper not what it should 
be. 

A dark shadow had early fallen upon his domestic life. His young wife, after 
giving birth to two daughters, was stricken with a mental malady, from which she 
never recovered. His daughters, who grew up to be the joy of his life, were 
placed with his mother at Paris, while he lived a lonely life in London lodgings. 
It was under these circumstances that “ Vanity Fair ” was begun early in 1847. It 
is the most widely known of all his works, although “The Newcomes” is regarded 
as the best of his novels. 

The other works of Thackeray consist mainly of his contributions to Fraser 
and the Cornhill , several volumes of foreign sketches, small Christmas books, and 
a volume of clever “Ballads.” Among these works are: “The Book of Snobs,” 
“The Yellowplush Papers,” “The Fitz-Boodle Papers,” “The Paris Sketch Book,” 
“The Irish Sketch Book,” “A Journey from Cornhill to Cairo,” “Cox’s Diary,” 
“The Second Funeral of Napoleon,” “ A Legend of the Rhine,” “The Kickleburys 
on the Rhine,” “Mrs. Perkins’s Ball,” “Our Street,” “Dr. Birch and his 
Friends,” and “The Rose and the Ring.” In 1887 was published a “Collection 
of the Letters of Thackeray,” written between 1847 an d I ^55 to his close friends, 
Mr. and Mrs. Brookfield. These present our best picture of the noble and 
lovable character of the man. 

Thackeray was a keen critic, and held up to ridicule the foibles and weak¬ 
nesses of mankind with a satire severe but mellowed with kindliness. It was for 
the arrogant and deceitful in fashionable society that he reserved his keenest shafts, 
and no man was ever more charitable to weakness when not concealed by decep¬ 
tion. It has been said that in Dickens’s characters we see our neighbor’s faults 
reflected ; in Thackeray’s we recognize our own. However this may be, certain it 
is that few of the famous writers have contributed more to the opening of the eyes 
of society to its own failings. He plied the lash unmercifully, but in a way that 
held the victim in spite of himself. He has not written solely to please, but his 
novels will continue to delight until men cease to enjoy the lifelike portraiture of 
the society in which their fathers moved. 









WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 


641 


THE FOTHERINGAY OFF THE STAGE. 
From “ Pendennis.” 


S Pen followed his companion up the creak¬ 
ing old stairs his knees trembled under 


him. He could hardly see when he en¬ 
tered, following the Captain, and stood in the 
room—her room. He saw something black be¬ 
fore him, and waving as if making a courtesy; 
and heard, but quite indistinctly, Costigan mak¬ 
ing a speech over him, in which the Captain, with 
his habitual magniloquence, expressed to “ me 
child ” his wish to make her known to “ his dear 
and admirable young friend, Mr. Authur Pindin- 
nis, a young gentleman of property in the neigh¬ 
borhood, a person of refoined moind and amiable 
manners, a sincere lover of poethry; and a man 
possest of a feeling and affectionate heart.” 

“ It is very fine weather,” Miss Fotheringay 
said, with an Irish accent, and a deep, rich, mel¬ 
ancholy voice. 

“Very,” said Mr. Pendennis. 

“And very warm,” continued this Empress and 
Queen of Sheba. 

The conversation thus begun rolled on. She 
asked Costigan whether he had had a pleasant 
evening at the George, and he recounted the sup¬ 
per and the tumblers of punch. Then the father 
asked her how she had been employed during the 
morning. 

“Bows came,” said she, “at ten, and we 
studied Ophaylia. It’s for the twenty-fourth, 
when I hope, Sir, we shall have the honor of 
seeing ye.” 

“Indeed you will,” Mr. Pendennis cried; 
wondering she should say “ Ophaylia,” and speak 
with an Irish inflection of voice naturally, who 
had not the least Hibernian accent on the stage. 

“ I’ve secured ’um for your benefit, dear,” 
said the Captain, tapping his waistcoat pocket, 
wherein lay Pen’s sovereigns, and winking at Pen, 
with one eye, at which the boy blushed. 

“Mr. -, the gentleman’s very obleeging,” 

said she. 

“ My name is Pendennis,” said Pen, blushing. 

<<I_I—hope you’ll—you’ll remember it.” His 

heart thumped so as he made this audacious decla¬ 
ration, that he almost choked in uttering it. 


“ Pendennis,” she answered slowly, and look¬ 
ing him full in the eyes with a glance so straight, 
so clear, so bright, so killing, with a voice so 
sweet, so round, so low, that the word transfixed 
him with pleasure. 

“ I never knew the name was so pretty before,” 
Pen said. 

“ ’Tis a very pretty name,” Ophelia said. “Pent- 
weazle’s not a pretty name. Remember, papa, 
when we were on the Norwich Circuit, young 
Pentweazle, who used to play second old man, and 
married Miss Raney, the Columbine? They’re 
both engaged in London now, at the Queen’s, and 
get five pounds a week. Pentweazle was n’t his 
real name. ’Twas Jedkin gave it to him—I do n’t 
know why. His name was Harrington ; that is, 
his real name was Potts; fawther a clergyman, 
very respectable. Harrington was in London, and 
got into debt. Ye remember, he came out in 
Falkland, to Mrs. Bunce’s Julia.” 

“ And a pretty Julia she was,” the Captain inter¬ 
posed; “a woman of fifty, and a mother of ten 
children. ’Tis you who ought to have been Julia, 
or my name’s not Jack Costigan.” 

“I did n’t take the leading business then,” Miss 
Fotheringay said modestly. “I was n’t fit for ’t 
till Bows taught me.” 

“True for you, my dear,” said the Captain; 
and bending to Pendennis, he added : “ Rejuced 
in circumstances, sir, I was for some time a fenc¬ 
ing-master in Dublin;—there’s only three men 
in the empire could touch me with the foil once, 
but Jack Costigan’s getting old and stiff now, sir— 
and my daughter had an engagement at the thay- 
ater there; and ’twas there that my friend, Mr. 
Bows, gave her lessons, and made her what ye 
see. What have ye done since Bows went, 
Emily ? ’ ’ 

“Sure, I’ve made a pie,” Emily said, with 
perfect simplicity. She pronounced it Poy. 

“ If ye’ll try it at four o’clock, sir, say the 
word,” said Costigan, gallantly. “ That girl, sir, 
makes the best veal-and-ham pie in England ; and 
I think I can promise ye a glass of punch of the 
right flavor.” 


4i 









642 


WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 


Pen had promised to be home at dinner at six 
o’clock; but the rascal thought he could accom¬ 
modate pleasure and duty in this point, and was 
only too eager to accept this invitation. He looked 
on with wonder and delight whilst Ophelia busied 
herself about the room, and prepared for the 
dinner. She arranged the glasses, and laid and 
smoothed the little cloth, all which duties she per¬ 
formed with a quiet grace and good humor which 
enchanted her guest more and more. The “ Poy ’ ’ 
arrived from the baker’s at the proper hour, and 
at four o’clock Pen found himself at dinner— 
actually at dinner with the handsomest woman in 
creation—with his first and only love, whom he 
had adored ever since, when?—ever since yester¬ 
day, ever since forever. He ate a crust of her 
making; he poured her out a glass of beer; he 
saw her drink a glass of punch—just one wine- 
glassful out of the tumbler which she mixed for 
her papa. She was perfectly good-natured, and 
offered to mix one for Pendennis, too. It was pro¬ 
digiously strong; Pen had never in his life drunk 
so much spirits-and-water. Was it the punch or 
the punch-maker who intoxicated him ? 

Pen tried to engage her in conversation about 
poetry and about her profession. He asked her 
what she thought of Ophelia’s madness, and 
whether she was in love with Hamlet or not. “ In 
love with such a little ojus wretch as that stunted 
manuger of a Bingley ! ” She bristled with indig¬ 
nation at the thought. Pen explained that it was 
not her of whom he spoke, but of the Ophelia of 
the play. “ Oh, indeed, if no offense was meant, 
none was taken; but as for Bingley, indeed, she 
did not value him—not that glass of punch ! ” 

Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. “ Kotzebue? 
Who was he?” “The author of the play in 
which she had been performing so admirably?” 
“She did not know that—the man’s name at the 
beginning of the book was Thompson,” she said. 
Pen laughed at her adorable simplicity. 

• •«••••• 

“ What was that he was talking about, the mad¬ 
ness of Hamlet, and the theory of the great Ger¬ 
man critic on the subject? ” Emily asked of her 
father. 

“’Deed then, I don’t know, Milly dear,” an¬ 


swered the Captain. “We’ll ask Bows when he 
comes.” 

“Anyhow, he’s a nice, fair-spoken, pretty 
young man,” the lady said. “ How many tick¬ 
ets did he take of you? ” 

“Faith, then, he took six, and gev me two 
guineas, Milly,” the Captain said. “I suppose 
them young chaps is not too flush of coin.” 

“He’s full of book-learning,” Miss Fotherin- 
gay continued. “Kotzebue! He, he, what a 
droll name, indeed, now; and the poor fellow 
killed by sand, too! Did ye ever hear such a 
thing? I’ll ask Bows about it, papa dear.” 

“A queer death, sure enough,” ejaculated the 
Captain, and changed the painful theme. “ ’Tis 
an elegant mare the young gentleman rides,” 
Costigan went on to say, and a grand breakfast, 
intirely, that young Mr. Foker gave us.” 

“ He’s good for two private boxes, and at least 
twenty tickets, I should say,” cried the daughter. 

“I’ll go bail of that,” answered the papa. And 
so the conversation continued for a while, until 
the tumbler of punch was finished; and their 
hour of departure soon came too ; for at half-past 
six Miss Fotheringay was to appear at the theater 
again, whither her father always accompanied her; 
and stood, as we have seen, in the side-scene 
watching her, and drinking spirits-and-water in 
the green-room with the company there. 

“How beautiful she is,” thought Pen, canter¬ 
ing homewards. “ How simple and how tender ! 
How charming it is to see a woman of her genius 
busying herself with the humble offices of domestic 
life, cooking dishes to make her old father com¬ 
fortable, and brewing him drink! How rude it 
was of me to begin to talk about professional mat¬ 
ters, and how well she turned the conversation ! 
By-the-way, she talked about professional matters 
herself; but then with what fun and humor she 
told the story of her comrade, Pentweazle, as he 
was called ! There is no humor like Irish humor. 
Her father is rather tedious, but thoroughly ami¬ 
able; and how fine of him giving lessons in fenc¬ 
ing, after he quitted the army, where he was the 
pet of the Duke of Kent ! Fencing ! I should 
like to continue my fencing, or I shall forget what 
Angelo taught me. Uncle Arthur always liked 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 


643 


me to fence ; he says it is the exercise of a gentle¬ 
man. Hang it ! I’ll take some lessons of Cap¬ 
tain Costigan. Goalong, Rebecca—up the hill, 


old lady ! Pendennis, Pendennis—, how she 
spoke the word ! Emily, Emily ! how good, how 
noble, how beautiful, how perfect she is !” 


•o^o» 


MISS REBECCA SHARP. 
From “Vanity Fair.” 


flISS SHARP’S father was an artist, and in 

_J that quality had given lessons of drawing 

at Miss Pinkerton’s school. He was a 
clever man; a pleasant companion, a careless 
student; with a great propensity for running into 
debt, and a partiality for the tavern. When he 
was drunk he used to beat his wife and daughter; 
and the next morning, with a headache, he would 
rail at the world for its neglect of his genuis, and 
abuse, with a good deal of cleverness, and some¬ 
times with perfect reason, the fools, his brother 
painters. As it was with the utmost difficulty 
that he could keep himself, and as he owed money 
for a mile about Soho, where he lived, he thought 
to better his circumstances by marrying a young 
woman of the French nation, who was by profes¬ 
sion an opera-girl. The humble calling of her 
female parent Miss Sharp never alluded to, but 
used to state subsequently that the Entrechats 
were a noble family of Gascony, and took great 
pride in her descent from them. And curious it 
is that as she advanced in life this young lady’s 
ancestors increased in rank and splendor. 

Rebecca’s mother had had some education some¬ 
where, and her daughter spoke French with purity, 
and a Parisian accent. It was in those days 
rather a rare accomplishment, and led to her 
engagement with the orthodox Miss Pinkerton. 
For the mother being dead, her father finding 
himself not likely to recover after his third attack 
of delirium tremens, wrote a manly and pathetic 
letter to Miss Pinkerton, recommending the or¬ 
phan child to her protection ; and so descended 
to the grave, after two bailiffs had quarreled over 
his corpse. Rebecca was seventeen when she 
came to Chiswick, and was bound over as an 
articled pupil; her duties being to talk French, 
and her privileges to live scot-free, and with 
a few guineas a year to gather scraps of knowl¬ 


edge from the professors who attended the 
school. 

She was small and slight in person ; pale, sandv- 
haired, and with eyes habitually cast down ; when 
they looked up, they were very large, odd, and 
attractive; so attractive, that the Reverend Mr, 
Crisp, fresh from Oxford, and curate to the Vicar 
of Chiswick, Reverend Mr. Flowerdew, fell in 
love with Miss Sharp, being shot dead by a glance 
from her eyes which were fired all the way across' 
Chiswick Church, from the school-pew to the 
reading-desk. This infatuated young man used 
sometimes to take tea with Miss Pinkerton, to 1 
whom he had been presented by his mamma, and 
actually proposed something like marriage in an 
intercepted note, which the one-eyed apple woman 
was charged to deliver. Mrs. Crisp was sum¬ 
moned from Buxton, and abruptly carried off her 
darling boy; but the idea even of such an eagle 
in the Chiswick dovecote caused a great flutter in 
the breast of Miss Pinkerton, who would have 
sent away Miss Sharp but that she was bound to 
her under a forfeit; and who never could thor¬ 
oughly believe the young lady’s protestations that 
she had never exchanged a single word with Mr. 
Crisp, except under her own eyes on the two 
occasions when she had met him at tea. 

By the side of many tall and bouncing young 
ladies in the establishment, Rebecca Sharp looked 
like a child. But she had the dismal precocity 
of poverty. Many a dun had she talked to, and 
turned away from her father’s door; many r, 
tradesman had she coaxed and wheedled into 
good humor, and into the granting of one meal 
more. She sat commonly with her father, who 
was very proud of her wit, and heard the talk of 
many of his wild companions—often ill-suited for 
a girl to hear. But she had never been a girl, 
she said; she had been a woman since she was 













644 


WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 



eight years old. Oh, why did Miss Pinkerton let 
such a dangerous bird into her cage. 

The fact is, the old lady believed Rebecca to 
be the meekest creature in 
the world; so admirably, 
on the occasions when her 
father brought her to Chis¬ 
wick, used Rebecca to per¬ 
form the part of an ingenue , 
and only a year before the 
arrangement by which Re¬ 
becca had been admitted 
into her house, and when 
Rebecca was sixteen years 
old, Miss Pinkerton majes¬ 
tically, and with a little 
speech, made her a present 
of a doll—which was, by 
the way, the confiscated 
property of Miss Swindle, 
discovered surreptitiously 
nursing it in school-hours. 

How the father and 
daughter laughed as they 
trudged home together 
after the evening party; 
and how Miss Pinkerton 
would have raged had she 
seen the caricature of her¬ 
self which the little mimic, 

Rebecca, managed to make 
out of her doll. Becky 
used to go through dia¬ 
logues with it; it formed 
the delight of Newman 
Street, Gerard Street, and 
the artists’ quarters; and 
the young painters, when 
they came to take their gin- 
and-water with their lazy, 
dissolute, clever, jovial 
senior, used regularly to 
ask if Miss Pinkerton was 

at home. Once Rebecca had the honor to pass 
a few days at Chiswick, after which she brought 
back Jemima, and erected another doll as Miss 


Jemmy; for though that honest creature had 
made and given her jelly and cake enough for 
three children, and a seven-shilling piece at part¬ 


Becky Sharp. 

ing, the girl’s sense of ridicule was far stronger 
than her gratitude, and she sacrificed Miss Jemmy 
quite as pitilessly as her sister. 











WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 



THOMAS NEWCOME ANSWERS. 
From “The Newcomes.” 


RES O, weeks passed away, during which our 
rail dear old friend still remained with us. 

His mind was gone at intervals, but would 
rally feebly; and with his consciousness returned 


time his memory appeared to awaken with sur- 
prising vividness, his cheek flushed and he was a 
youth again : a youth all love and hope—a stricken 
old man with a beard as white as snow covering his 

noble, care-worn face. At 
such times he called her 
by her Christian name of 
Leon ore; he addressed 
courtly old words of regard 
and kindness to the aged 
lady. Anon he wandered 
in his talk, and spoke to 
her as if they still were 
young. Now, as in those 
early days, his heart was 
pure; no anger remained 
in it; no guile tainted it; 
only peace and good-will 

dwelt in it. 

The days went on, and 
our hopes, raised sometimes, 
began to flicker and fall. 
One evening the Colonel 
left his chair for his bed in 
pretty good spirits, but 
passed a disturbed night, 
and the next morning was 
too weak to rise. Then he 
remained in his bed, and 
* his friends visited him there. 
One afternoon he asked for 
his little gown-boy, and the 
child was brought to him, 
and sat by his bed with a 
very awe-stricken face ; and 
then gathered courage, and 
tried to amuse him by tell¬ 
ing him how it was a half¬ 
holiday, and they were hav- i 
ing a cricket-match with 
the St. Peter’s boys in 
the green, and the Gray 
Friars was in and win¬ 
ning. The Colonel quite understood about it; 
he would like to see the game ; he had played 



Colonel Newcome. 


his love, his simplicity, his sweetness. He would 
taik French with Madame de Florae ; at which 

























646 


WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 


many a game on that green when he was a boy. 
He grew excited. Clive dismissed his father’s lit¬ 
tle friend, and put a sovereign into his hand; and 
away he ran to say that Codd Colonel had come 
into a fortune, and to buy tarts, and to see the 
match out. 

After the child had gone, Thomas Newcome 
began to wander more and more. He talked 
louder; he gave the word of command; spoke 
Hindustanee, as if to his men. Then he spoke 
French rapidly, seizing a hand that was near him, 
and crying “ Toujours, toujours / ’ ’ But it was 
Ethel’s hand which he took. Ethel and Clive 
and the nurse were in the room with him. The 
nurse came to us, who were sitting in the adjoin¬ 
ing apartment; Madame de Florae was there, 
with my wife and Bayham. At the look in the 
woman’s countenance Madame de Florae started 
up. “ He is very bad ; he wanders a great deal,” 
the nurse whispered. The French lady fell in¬ 
stantly on her knees, and remained rigid in prayer. 

Some time afterward Ethel came in with a 
scared face to our pale group. “ He is calling 
for you again, dear lady,” she said to Madame de 


Florae, who was still kneeling; “and said just 
now he wanted Pendennis to take care of his boy. 
He will not know you.” She hid her tears as she 
spoke. 

She went into the room where Clive was at the 
bed’s foot. The old man within it talked on 
rapidly for a while; then he would sigh and be 
still. Once more I heard him say hurriedly, 
“Take care of him while I am in India,” and 
then with a heart-rending voice he called out 
“ Leonore, Leonore !” She was kneeling by his 
side now. The patient’s voice sank into faint 
murmurs; only a moan now and then announced 
that he was not asleep. 

At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began 
to toll, and Thomas Newcome’s hands outside the 
bed feebly beat time. And just as the last bell 
struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, 
and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said 
“ Adsum /” and fell back. It was the word we 
used at school when the names were called ; and 
lo, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, 
had answered to his name, and stood in the pres¬ 
ence of The Master. 




OLD FABLES WITH A NEW PURPOSE. 

Introduction to 


CROW, who had flown away with a cheese 
from a dairy window, sat perched on a 
tree, looking down at a great, big frog in 
a pool underneath him. The frog’s hideous, large 
eyes were goggling out of his head in a manner 
which appeared quite ridiculous to the old black¬ 
amoor, who watched the splay-footed, slimy 
wretch with that peculiar grim humor belonging 
to crows. Not far from the frog a fat ox was 
browsing; while a few lambs frisked about the 
meadow, or nibbled the grass and buttercups 
there. 

Who should come into the farther end of the 
field but a wolf! He was so cunningly dressed up 
in sheep’s clothing that the very lambs did not 
know master wolf; nay, one of them, whose dam 
the wolf had just eaten, after which he had thrown 
her skin over his shoulders, ran up innocently 


The Newcomes. ” 

toward the devouring monster, mistaking him for 
mamma. 

“ He-he! ” says a fox, sneaking round the 
hedge-paling, over which the tree grew whereupon 
the crow was perched, looking down on the frog 
who was staring with his goggle eyes fit to burst 
with envy, and croaking abuse at the ox. “ How 
absurd those lambs are! Yonder silly little 
knock-kneed baah-ling does not know the old 
wolf dressed in the sheep’s fleece. He is the same 
old rogue who gobbled up little Red Riding 
Hood’s grandmother for lunch, and swallowed 
little Red Riding Hood for supper. He-he ! ” 

An owl, that was hidden in the hollow of the 
tree, woke up. “O ho, master fox,” says she, 
“ I can not see you, but I smell you! If some 
folks like lambs, other folks like geese,” says the 
owl. 

























^ ■< ~*T> itfc W w i, > 0 ■ V * l'> 


browning. 


George, EL/or. 


ELIZAS^ 


\pHANr, 


NOTED 

ENGLISH 

WOMEN 


HE MANS ' 








c 


TO 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 

MOST MELODIOUS OF POETS AMONG WOMEN. 

HIRTY years ago the poems of Mrs. Browning were everywhere 
read. The sweetness and beauty of her verse, the wide range 
as well as the accuracy and completeness of her mental grasp, 
her devotion to the cause of civil freedom and moral elevation, 
made her one of the most popular poets of the time. Elizabeth 
Barrett was born in Durham, England, in 1809, and passed her 
childhood in her father’s country house in Herefordshire. She 
was very remarkable for the precocity of her mind. It is said that she could read 
Greek at eight years, and at seventeen she translated the “ Prometheus ” of zEschy- 
lus, and published an “ Essay on the Mind.” In her day little English girls did not 
receive the broad and somewhat free education given to their brothers, but Eliza^ 
beth Barrett was exempted from the restrictions of her sex and given the educa¬ 
tion of a boy. Her friend, Miss Mitford, has thus described her: 

“ She certainly was one of the most interesting persons I had ever seen. 
Everybody who then saw her said the same, so that it is not merely the impression 
of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of 
dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly 
fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness 
that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went 
together to Chiswick, that the translator of the ‘ Prometheus ’ of zEschylus, the 
authoress of the ‘ Essay on Mind,’ was old enough to be introduced into company 
—in technical language, was out .” 

When she was twenty-eight she ruptured a blood-vessel in her lungs which 
did not heal, and which made her for nine years a confirmed invalid whose life was 
constantly despaired of by her friends. In the meantime, however, in her dark¬ 
ened room, she pursued her labors, at study and in composition, and published two 
small volumes of verse, and later a collection of all her poems which she thought 
worthy of preservation. This collection contained the following lines, which led to 
her meeting Robert Browning : 

Or at times a modern volume: Wordsworth’s solemn idyll, 

Howitt’s ballad verse, or Tennyson’s enchanted reverie ; 

Or from Browning some “Pomegranate,” which if cut deep down the middle. 

Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity. 

647 








































6 q 3 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 


Mr. Browning was a stranger to her, but called to offer thanks for the compli¬ 
ment contained in the last couplet, and by a mistake of the servant was shown into 
Miss Barrett’s room, to which only her most intimate friends were admitted. The 
acquaintance thus begun resulted in their marriage in 1846. The bride rose from 
her couch to be married, but her health improved, and during the remainder of 
her life continued reasonably good, although she was never strong. 

The Brownings resided, during almost their entire married life, at Florence. 
In 1839 Mrs. Browning published “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” which, contrary 
to the apparent meaning of the title, are original poems, and not translations. 
“ Casa Guidi Windows,” as the author says, “ contains the impressions of the writer 
upon events in Tuscany of which she was a witness. It is a simple story of per¬ 
sonal impressions, whose only value is in the intensity with which they were 
received, or in proving her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country. 
The sincerity with which they are related indicates her own good faith and freedom 
from partisanship.” 

In 1856 appeared the longest of her poems, “Aurora Leigh,” which she 
characterized as “ the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest 
convictions upon life and art have entered.” This novel in verse was, at least in 
part, written in England, whither the Brownings returned for a short time after a 
residence of eight years in Florence. Returning to Italy, Mrs. Browning put forth, 
in i860, a little volume originally entitled “Poems before Congress,” afterward 
published, with additions, under the title, “ Napoleon III in Italy, and other 
Poems.” She died in Florence in 1861. 

“Can’t you imagine,” said her husband, in comparing his work with hers, “a 
clever sort of angel, who plots, and plans, and tries to build up something he 
wants to make you see as he sees it, shows you one point of view, carries you off 
to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand; and 
whilst this bother is going on, God Almighty turns you off a little star,—that’s 
the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine.” 



THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. 

We meet together at the feast— 

To private mirth betake us— 

We stare down in the winecup, lest 
Some vacant chair should shake us! 
We name delight, and pledge it round— 
“ It shall be ours to-morrow ! ” 

God’s seraphs ! do your voices sound 
As sad in naming sorrow ? 

Be pitiful, O God l 


HERE is no God,” the foolish saith, 

But none, “There is no sorrow ” ; 
And nature oft the cry of faith 
In bitter need will borrow ; 

Eyes which the preacher could not school 
By wayside graves are raised; 

And lips say, “ God be pitiful,” 

Who ne’er said, “ God be praised.” 

Be pitiful, O God ! 












ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 


We sit together, with the skies, 

The steadfast skies, above us; 

We look into each other’s eyes, 

^ “ And how long will you love us ? ” 
The eyes grow dim with prophecy, 

The voices, low and breathless— 
“Till death us part! ”—O words, to be 
Our best for love the deathless! 

Be pitiful, dear God ! 


We pray together at the kirk, 
For mercy, mercy, solely— 
Hands weary with the evil work, 
We lift them to the Holy! 


The corpse is calm below our knee— 

Its spirit bright before Thee— 

Between them, worse than either, we 
Without the rest of glory ! 

Be pitiful, O God ! 

And soon all vision waxeth dull— 

Men whisper, “ He is dying ” ; 

We cry no more, “ Be pitiful! ”— 

We have no strength for crying: 

No strength, no need ! Then, Soul of mine 
Look up and triumph rather— 

Lo ! in the depth of God’s Divine, 

The Son adjures the Father—■ 

Be pitiful, O God ! 


1 


THE SLEEP. 

“ He giveth His beloved sleep.”— Ps. cxxvii , 2 . 


F all the thoughts of God that are 
Borne inward into souls afar 

Along the Psalmist’s music deep. 
Now tell me if that any is, 

For gift or grace surpassing this— 

“ He giveth His beloved sleep.” 

What would we give to our beloved ? 

The hero’s heart to be unmoved, 

The poet’s star-tuned harp to sweep, 

The partriot’s voice to teach and rouse, 

The monarch’s crown to light the brows?— 
He giveth His beloved sleep. 

What do we give to our beloved ? 

A little faith all undisproved, 

A little dust to overweep, 

And bitter memories to make 
The whole earth blasted for our sake. 

He giveth His beloved sleep. 

“Sleep soft, beloved ! ” we sometimes say, 
Who have no tune to charm away 

Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep; 
But never doleful dream again 
Shall break the happy slumber when 
He giveth His beloved sleep. 

O earth, so full of dreary noises ! 

O men, with wailing in your voices! 

O delved gold the wailers heap ! 


O strife, O curse, that o’er it fall! 

God strikes a silence through you all. 
And giveth His beloved sleep. 

His dews drop mutely on the hill, 

His cloud above it saileth still, 

Though on its slope men sow and reap; 
More softly than the dew is shed, 

Or cloud is floated over head, 

He giveth His beloved sleep. 

Ay, men may wonder while they scan 
A living, thinking, feeling man 
Confirmed in such a rest to keep; 

But angels say,—and through the word 
I think their happy smile is heard ,— 

“ He giveth His beloved sleep.” 


For me, my heart that erst did go 
Most like a tired child at a show, 

That sees through tears the mummers leap 
Would now its wearied vision close, 

Would child-like on His love repose, 

Who giveth His beloved sleep. 

And friends, dear friends, when it shall be 
That this low breath is gone from me, 

And round my bier ye come to weep, 

Let one most loving of you all 
Say, “ Not a tear must o’er her fall ! 

‘ He giveth His beloved sleep.’ ” 









GEORGE ELIOT. 

THE GREATEST NOVELIST OF THE ANALYTICAL SCHOOL. 

MONG the novelists since Dickens and Thackeray no one can com¬ 
pare with George Eliot in native force and vigor, in ability to read, 
through the indications of their outward lives and actions, the under- 
lying forces which form the character of men and women. Other 
writers have put before us the surface of life ; George Eliot depicts 
for her readers the very souls of her characters. It is this ability to 
go deep into the inner lives of men, to see, and so to picture, the 
real beings who move within this outer shell we call ourselves, which gave her so 
strong a hold upon the public and imparted to her books a quality peculiarly their 
own. 

Marian Evans was of Welsh descent, but she was born at South Farm, near 
Griff, in Warwickshire, England, in 1819. Her father, whose portrait she has 
drawn in the character of Adam Bede, was a land agent, but had started in life as 
a carpenter. He was a man of great ability, and was entrusted with the manage¬ 
ment of the estates of several large landowners in Warwickshire. His family, 
therefore, occupied a social position equal that of any of the professional people of 
the vicinity, and the circumstances of his life gave his gifted daughter the oppor¬ 
tunity of gaining that wonderfully intimate knowledge of widely different classes of 
people which is shown in her novels. Mrs. Evans died when Marian had arrived 
at the age of fifteen, and after the marriage of an elder sister the management of 
the household fell upon her. She had received a good education, and was proficient 
in French, German, and music. After her father retired from active work, in 1841, 
she studied Latin and Greek, and became absorbed in philosophy, particularly in 
its relation to religion. Her first literary work was the translation of Strauss’ 
'‘Life of Jesus,” and was followed by similar work upon Feuerbach’s “ Essence of 
Christianity,” and Spinoza’s “ Ethics.” Mr. Evans dying in 1849, his daughter was 
induced to spend some months with her kind friends, the Brays and the family of 
the Artist D’Albert, abroad. Returning, she became sub-editor of the Westminster 
Review , and a member of the most brilliant literary circle of the time, numbering 
among her intimate friends Herbert Spencer, Janies and Harriet Martineau, and 
others of equal fame. 

Beside her work as sub-editor, she contributed to the Review a number of the 
most remarkable essays that appeared in its pages. Among these were “ Carlyle’s 

650 






















GEORGE ELIOT. 


65 1 


Sterling,” “Margaret Fuller,” “Women in France,” “ Evangelical Teach- 
ing, and “ Worldliness and Otherworldliness.” 

She continued in this work until 1854, when she assumed the duties of a wife 
to Mr. George Henry Lewes, and of a mother to his sons. In 1857 she published 
a volume of short stories entitled “ Scenes from Clerical Life,” over the name of 
George Eliot, which she attached to all her later works, and which, until it became 
famous as that of the leading novelist of the time, effectually concealed her 
identity. It was at once evident to all who were in the secret that she was a true 
novelist, and she henceforth put all her energies into the works which will remain 
as classical specimens of English fiction. Her fame grew with the appearance of 
“Adam Bede,” “The Mill on the Floss,” “Silas Maruer,” “Romola,” “Felix 
Holt,” and “ Middlemarch ” ; “ Daniel Deronda ” did not increase her reputation, 
but well maintained it; “The Impressions of Theophrastus Such” has, however, 
been less read. After the death of Mr. Lewes she was married to Mr. John W. 
Cross, who had for many years been a close and faithful friend, but before the end 
of the year, 1880, she died. Opinion will always be divided as to which is her 
best book and which her finest character, but the woman who has enriched our lit¬ 
erature with the high-souled carpenter, Adam Bede, and the pure unworldliness of 
Dinah Morris, who has brought us face to face with the doubts and fears, and, 
better, with the certainties, which filled the soul of Savonarola, may well be 
described as “ an expression of the spirit of the age out of which she grew,” 
or the “exponent of the thought of the third quarter of the nineteenth century.” 
As such she will take her place among the strongest characters and the ablest 
minds that have given of their best for the benefit of mankind. 


i===if==i 


FLORENCE IN 1794. 
From “Romola.” 


N 1493 the rumor spread, and became louder 
and louder, that Charles the Eighth of 
France was about to cross the Alps with a 
mighty army; and the Italian populations, accus¬ 
tomed, since Italy had ceased to be the heart of the 
Roman Empire, to look for an arbitrator from afar, 
‘began vaguely to regard his coming as a means 
of avenging their wrongs and redressing their 
grievances. 

And in that rumor Savonarola had heard the 
assurance that his prophecy was being verified. 
What was it that filled the ears of the prophets of 
old but the distant tread of foreign armies, coming 
to do the work of justice? He no longer looked 
vaguely to the horizon for the coming storm: he 



pointed to the rising cloud. The French army 
was that new deluge which was to purify the earth 
from iniquity; the French king, Charles VIII, 
was the instrument elected by God, as Cyrus had 
been of old, and all men who desired good rather 
than evil were to rejoice in his coming. For the 
scourge would fall destructively on the impenitent 
alone. Let any city of Italy—let Florence above 
all—Florence, beloved of God, since in its ear 
the warning voice had been especially sent—repent 
and turn from its ways, like Nineveh of old, and 
the storm-cloud would roll over it and leave only 
refreshing rain-drops. 

Fra Girolamo’s word was powerful; yet now 
that the new Cyrus had already been three months 














652 


GEORGE ELIOT. 


in Italy, and was not far from the gates of Florence, 
his presence was expected there with mixed feel¬ 
ings, in which fear and distrust certainly predom¬ 
inated. At present it was not understood that he 
had redressed any grievances; and the Florentines 
certainly had nothing to thank him for. Fie held 
their strong frontier fortresses, which Piero de’ 
Medici had given up to him without securing any 
honorable terms in return ; he had done nothing to 
quell the alarming revolt of Pisa, which had been 
encouraged by his presence to throw off the Floren¬ 
tine yoke ; and “ orators,” even with a prophet at 
their head, could win no assurance from him, 
except that he would settle everything when he 
was once within the walls of Florence. Still, 
there was the satisfaction of knowing that the 
exasperating Piero de’ Medici had been fairly 
pelted out for the ignominious surrender of the 
fortresses, and in that act of energy the spirit 
of the Republic had recovered some of its old fire. 

The preparations for the equivocal guests were 
not those of a city resigned to submission. Behind 
the bright drapery and banners symbolic of joy, 
there were preparations of another sort made with 


common accord by the government and people. 
Well hidden within walls there were hired soldiers 
of the Republic, hastily called in from the sur¬ 
rounding districts; there were old arms duly fur¬ 
bished, and sharp tools and heavy cudgels laid 
carefully at hand, to be snatched up on short 
notice; there were excellent boards and stakes to 
form barricades upon occasion, and a good supply 
of stones to make a surprising hail from the upper 
windows. Above all, there were people very 
strongly in the humor of fighting any personage 
who might be supposed to have designs of hector¬ 
ing over them, they having lately tasted that new 
pleasure with much relish. This humor was not 
diminished by the sight of occasional parties of 
Frenchmen, coming beforehand to choose their 
quarters, with a hawk, perhaps, on their left wrist, 
and, metaphorically speaking, a piece of chalk in 
their right hand to mark Italian doors withal; 
especially as creditable historians imply that many 
sons of France were at that time characterized by 
something approaching to a swagger, which must 
have whetted the Florentine appetite for a little 
stone-throwing. 


-- 


A PASSAGE AT ARMS. 
From “Adam Bede.” 


ARTLE MASSEY returned from the fire- 
JB place, where he had been smoking his first 
pipe in quiet, and broke the silence by 
saying, as he thrust his forefinger into the canis¬ 
ter, “ Why, Adam, how happened you not to be 
at church on Sunday? answer me that, you rascal. 
The anthem went limping without you. Are you 
going to disgrace your schoolmaster in his old 
age?” 

“No, Mr. Massey,” said Adam. “Mr. and 
Mrs. Poyser can tell you where I was. I was in 
no bad company.” 

“She’s gone, Adam, gone to Snowfield,” said 
Mr. Poyser, reminded of Dinah for the first time 
this evening. “I thought you’d ha’ persuaded 
her better. Nought ’ud hold her but she must go 
yesterday forenoon. The missis has hardly got 

17 


over it. I thought she’d ha’ no sperrit for th’ 
harvest supper.” 

Mrs. Poyser had thought of Dinah several times 
since Adam had come in, but she had had “no 
heart ” to mention the bad news. 

“ What ! ” said Bartle with an air of disgust. 
“Was there a woman concerned ! Then I give 
you up, Adam.” 

“ But it’s a woman you’ve spoke well on, Bar- 
tie,” said Mr. Poyser. “ Come, now, you canna 
draw back ; you said once as women would n’t ha’ 
been a bad invention if they’d all been like 
Dinah.” 

“ I meant her voice, man—I meant her voice, 
that was all,” said Bartle. “I can bear to hear 
her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears. 
As for other things, I dare say she’s like the rest 











GEORGE ELIOT. 


653 


o’ the women—thinks two and two ’ll come to 
make five, if she cries and bothers enough about 
it.” 

“Ay, ay ! ” said Mrs. Poyser, “ one ’ud think, 
an’ hear some folks talk, as the men war’ cute 
enough to count the corns in a bag o’ wheat wi’ 
only smelling at it. They can see through a barn 
door, they can. Perhaps that’s the reason they 
can see so little this side on’t.” 

Martin Poyser shook with delighted laughter, 
and winked at Adam as much as to say the school¬ 
master was in for it now. 

“Ah!” said Bartle, sneeringly, “ the women 
are quick enough, they’re quick enough. They 
know the rights of a story before they hear it, and 
can tell a man what his thoughts are before he 
knows ’em himself.” 

“Like enough,” said Mrs. Poyser, “for the 
men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 
’em an’ they can only catch ’em by the tail. I 
can count a stocking-top while a man’s getting’s 
tongue ready ; an’ when he outs wi’ his speech at 
last, there’s little broth to be made on’t. It’s 
your dead chicks takes the longest hatchin’. 
However, I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish ; 
God Almighty made ’em to match the men.” 

“Match!” said Bartle; “ay, as vinegar 
matches one’s teeth. If a man says a word, his 
wife ’ll match it with a contradiction ; if he’s a 
mind for hot meat, his wife ’ll match it with 
cold bacon ; if he laughs, she’ll match him with 
whimpering. She’s such a match as th’ horse-fly is 
to th’ horse; she’s got the right venom to sting 
him with—the right venom to sting him with.” 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Poyser, “I know what the 
men like—a poor soft, as ’ud simper at ’em like 
the pictur o’ the sun, whether they did right or 
wrong, an’ say thank you for a kick, an’ pretend 


she didna know which end she stood uppermost, 
till her husband told her. That’s what a man 
wants in a wife, mostly ; he wants to make sure 
o’ one fool as’ll tell him he’s wise. But there’s 
some men can do wi’out that—they think so much 
o’ themselves a’ready ; an’ that’s how it is there’s 
old bachelors.” 

“ Come, Craig,” said Mr. Poyser, jocosely, 
“ you mun get married pretty quick, else you ’ll 
be set down for an old bachelor; an’ you see 
what the women ’ll think on you.” 

“Well,” said Mr. Craig, willing to conciliate 
Mrs. Poyser, and setting a high value on his own 
compliments, “/ like a cleverish woman—a wo¬ 
man o’ sperrit—a managing woman.” 

“You’re out there, Craig,” said Bartle, dryly; 
“you’re out there. You judge o’ your garden- 
stuff on a better plan than that; you pick the 
things for what they can excel in—for what they 
can excel in. You don’t value your peas for 
their roots, or your carrots for their flowers. 
Now, that’s the way you should choose women; 
their cleverness ’ll never come to much—never 
come to much; but they make excellent simple¬ 
tons, ripe and strong-flavored.” 

“What dost say to that?” said Mr. Poyser, 
throwing himself back and looking merrily at his 
wife. 

“ Say ! ” answered Mrs. Poyser, with dangerous 
fire kindling in her eye; “why, I say as some 
folks’ tongues are like the clocks as run on strik¬ 
in’, not to tell you the time o’ the day, but 
because there’s summat wrong i’ their own in¬ 
side.” 

Mrs. Poyser would probably have brought her 
rejoinder to a further climax, if everyone’s at¬ 
tention had not at this moment been called to the 
other end of the table. 




THE POYSER FAMILY GO TO CHURCH. 
From “Adam Bede.” 


^HERE’S father a standing at the yard gate,” 
said Martin Poyser. “ I reckon he wants 
to watch us down the field. It’s wonderful 
what sight he has, and him turned seventy-five.” 
'< Ah ! I often think it’s wi’ th’ old folks as it is 


wi’ the babbies,” said Mrs. Poyser; “they’re 
satisfied wi’ looking, no matter what they’re look¬ 
ing at. It’s God Almighty’s way o’ quietening 
’em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep.” 

Old Martin opened the gate as he saw the 












6 54 


GEORGE ELIOT. 


family procession approaching, and held it wide 
open, leaning on his stick—pleased to do this bit 
of work ; for, like all old men whose life has been 
spent in labor, he liked to feel that he was still 
useful—that there was a better crop of onions in 
the garden because he was by at the sowing, and 
that the cows would be milked the better if he 
staid at home on a Sunday afternoon to look on. 
He always went to church on Sacrament Sundays, 
but not very regularly at other times; on wet 
Sundays, or whenever he had a touch of rheuma¬ 
tism, he used to read the three first chapters of 
Genesis instead. 

“They’ll ha putten Thias Bede i’ the ground 
afore ye get to the churchyard,” he said, as his 
son came up. “It ’ud ha’ been better luck if 
they’d ha’ buried him i’ the forenoon, when the 
rain was failin’ ; there’s no likelihoods of a drop 
now, an’ the moon lies like a boat there, dost 
see? That’s a sure sign of fair weather; there’s 
many as is false, but that’s sure.” 

“Ay, ay,” said the son, “I’m in hopes it’ll 
hold up now.” 

“ Mind what the parson says—mind what the 
parson says, my lads,” said grandfather to the 
black-eyed youngsters in knee-breeches, conscious 
of a marble or two in their pockets, which they 
looked forward to handling a little, secretly, dur¬ 
ing the sermon. 

And when they were all gone, the old man 
leaned on the gate again, watching them across 
the lane, along the Home Close, and through the 
far gate, till they disappeared behind a bend in 
the hedge. For the hedgerows in those days shut 
out one’s view, even on the better-managed 
farms'; and this afternoon the dog-roses were 
tossing out their pink wreaths, the night-shade 
was in its yellow and purple glory, the pale 
honeysuckle grew out of reach, peeping high up 
out of a holly bush, and, over all, an ash or a 
sycamore every now and then threw its shadow 
across the path. 

There were acquaintances at other gates who 
had to move aside and let them pass; at the gate 
of the Home Close there was half the dairy of 
cows standing one behind the other, extremely 
slow to understand that their large bodies might 


be in the way; at the far gate there was the mare 
holding her head over the bars, and beside her the 
liver-colored foal with its head toward its moth¬ 
er’s flank, apparently still much embarrassed by its 
own straddling existence. The way lay entirely 
through Mr. Poyser’s own fields till they reached 
the main road leading to the village, and he 
turned a keen eye on the stock and the crops as 
they went along, while Mrs. Poyser was ready to 
supply a running commentary on them all. The 
woman who manages a dairy has a large share in 
making the rent, so she may well be allowed to 
have her opinion on stock and their “keep”— 
an exercise which strengthens her understanding 
so much that she finds herself able to give her 
husband advice on most other subjects. 

“ There’s that short-horned Sally,” she said, as 
they entered the Home Close, and she caught 
sight of the meek beast that lay chewing the cud, 
and looking at her with a sleepy eye. “ I begin 
to hate the sight o’ the cow ; and I say now what 
I said three weeks ago, the sooner we get rid of 
her th’ better, for there’s that little yallow cow as 
doesn’t give half the milk and yet I’ve twice as 
much butter from her.” 

“ Why, thee’t not like the women in general,” 
said Mr. Poyser; they like the short-horns, as 
give such a lot of milk. There’s Chowne’s wife 
wants him to buy no other sort.” 

“What’s it sinnify what Chowne’s wife likes ? 
a poor, soft thing, wi’ no more head-piece nor a 
sparrow. She’d take a big cullender to strain her 
lard wi’, and then wander as the scratchin’s run 
through. I’ve seen enough of her to know as I’ll 
niver take a servant from her house again—all 
huggermugger—and you’d niver know, when you 
went-in, whether it was Monday or Friday, the 
wash draggin’ on to th’ end o’ the week; and as 
for her cheese, I know well enough it rose like a 
loaf in a tin last year. An’ then she talks o’ the 
weather bein’ i’ fault, as there’s folks ’ud stand 
on their heads and then say the fault was i’ their 
boots.” 

“ Well, Chowne’s been wanting to buy Sally, so 
we can get rid of her, if thee lik’st,” said Mr. 
Poyser, secretly proud of his wife’s superior power 
of putting two and two together; indeed, on re- 



GEORGE ELIOT. 


655 


cent market days, he had more than once boasted of 
her discernment in this very matter of short-horns. 

4 < Ay, them as choose a soft for a wife may’s 
well buy up the short-horns, for, if you get your 
head stuck in a bog, your legs may’s well go after 
it. Eh! talk o’ legs, there’s legs for you,” Mrs. 
Poyser continued, as Totty, who had been set 
down now the road was dry, toddled on in front 
of her father and mother. “There’s shapes! 
An’ she’s got such a long foot, she’ll be her fath¬ 
er’s own child.” 

“ Ay, she’ll be welly such a one as Hetty i’ ten 
years time, ony she’s got thy colored eyes. I 
niver remember a blue eye i’ my family; my 
mother had eyes as black as sloes, just like 
Hetty’s.” 

“ The child ’ull be none the worse for having 
summat as isn’t like Hetty. An’ I’m none for 
having her so over pretty. Though, for the mat¬ 
ter o’ that, there’s people wi’ light hair an’ blue 
eyes as pretty as them wi’ black. If Dinah had 
got a bit o’ color in her cheeks, an’ did n’t stick 
that Methodist cap on her head, enough to frighten 
the crows, folks ’ud think her as pretty as Hetty.” 

“ Nay, nay,” said Mr. Poyser, with rather a 
contemptuous emphasis, “ thee dostna know the 
pints of a woman. The men ’ud niver run after 
Dinah as they would after Hetty.” 

“ What care I what the men ’ud run after? It’s 
well seen what choice the most of ’em know how 
to make, by the poor draggle-tails o’ wives you 
see, like bits o’ gauze ribbin, good for nothing 
when the color’s gone.” 

“ Well, well, thee canstna say but what I know’d 
how to make a choice when I married thee,” said 
Mr. Poyser, who usually settled little conjugal dis¬ 
putes by a compliment of this sort, “and thee 
was twice as buxom as Dinah ten years ago.” 

“ I niver said as a woman had need to be ugly 
to make a good missis of a house. There’s 
Chowne’s wife ugly enough to turn the milk an’ 
save the rennet, but she’ll niver save nothing any 
other way. But as for Dinah, poor child, she’s 
niver likely to be buxom as long as she’ll make 
her dinner o’ cake and water, for the sake o’ giv¬ 
ing to them as want. She provoked me past bear¬ 
ing sometimes; and, as I told her, she went clean 


again’ the Scriptur, for that says, ‘ Love your 
neighbor as yourself’; but I said, ‘if you loved 
your neighbor no better nor you do yourself, 
Dinah, it’s little enough you’d do for him. 
You’d be thinking he might do well enough on a 
half-empty stomach.’ Eh, I wonder where she is 
this blessed Sunday ! sitting by that sick woman, 
I daresay, as she’d set her heart on going to all 
of a sudden.” 

“Ah ! it was a pity she should take such megrims 
int’ her head, when she might ha’ stayed wi’ us 
all summer, and eaten twice as much as she wanted, 
and it’d niver ha’ been missed. She made no 
odds in th’ house at all, for she sat as still at her 
sewing as a bird on the nest, and was uncommon 
nimble at running to fetch anything. If Hetty 
gets married, thee’dst like to ha’ Dinah wi’ thee 
constant.” 

“ It’s no use thinkin’ o’ that,” said Mrs. Poyser. 
“ You might as well beckon to the flyin’ swallow, 
as ask Dinah to come an’ live here comfortable 
like other folks. If any thing could turn her I 
should ha’ turned her, for I’ve talked to her for 
an hour on end, and scolded her too ; for she’s 
my own sister’s child, and it behooves me to do 
what I can for her. But eh, poor thing, as soon 
as she’d said us ‘good-bye,’ an’ got into the cart, 
an’ looked back at me with her pale face, as is 
welly like her Aunt Judith come back from heaven, 
I begun to be frightened to think o’ the set downs 
I’d given her; for it comes over you sometimes as 
if she’d a way o’ knowing the rights o’ things more 
nor other folks have. But I’ll niver give in as 
that’s ’cause she’s a Methodist, nor more nor a 
white calf’s white ’cause it eats out o’ the same 
bucket wi’ a black un.” 

“Nay,” said Mr. Poyser, with as near an ap¬ 
proach to a snarl as his good-nature would allow; 
“ I’ve no opinion o’ the Methodists. It’s only 
trades-folks as turn Methodists; you niver knew a 
farmer bitten wi’ them maggots. There’s maybe 
a workman now and then, as isn’t over diverat’s 
work, takes to preachin’ an’ that, like Seth Bede., 
But you see Adam, as has got one of the best 
head-pieces hereabout, knows better ; he’s a good 
Churchman, else I’d niver encourage him for a 
sweetheart for Hetty.” 












THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 


THE MOST VERSATILE WRITER OF THE CENTURY. 



NE of the most delightful books in the world is “The Life and 

o 

Letters of Lord Macaulay,” by his nephew, George O. Trevelyan. 
It is delightful because Macaulay was one of the most wonderful 
characters that ever lived. As a child he exhibited the most phe¬ 
nomenal ability, reading with the utmost avidity books far beyond 
the capacity of any ordinary boy, acquiring languages with the 
greatest ease, and, while his manner exhibited some oddities, due 


to his familiarity with “grown-up” forms of expression, retaining, nevertheless, his 
boyish interest in play and all the child-life in the large family of which he was a 
member. When four or five years old he was at tea, with others of his family, 
at the house of a friend, when an awkward maid spilled hot coffee over his legs. 
His compassionate hostess presently inquired if he were better, and he replied, 
with perfect simplicity, “Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.” 

Macaulay was the son of a West India merchant who was associated with 
Wilberforce and others in the battle against slavery. He was born at Rothley, in 
Leicestershire, in 1800. He won distinction at Cambridge, and, after studying 
law, was called to the bar in 1826, but never did more than enter upon legal prac¬ 
tice. He had already begun to contribute to the magazines, articles both in prose 
and verse having appeared in Knight's Quarterly Magazine. Macaulay began 
his contributions to the Edinburgh Review in 1825, and continued to write for it 
for nearly twenty years. These essays were collected and edited by himself, 
and published in three volumes, which contain much of the finest prose in the 
language. 

He wrote a number of articles for the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, notable among 
which were those upon Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson, and Pitt. He entered political 
life in 1830, when he was elected to Parliament, and took at once an important 
part in public affairs. His father having become financially embarrassed, Macaulay 
was from this time burdened with the care of his brother and sisters. He was for¬ 
tunate in obtaining government posts, and in 1834 was sent to India as a member 
of the Supreme Council, his special charge being to draw up a new Penal Code for 
India. This work occupied him four years, and from it he returned to England with 
a fair competence. He was Secretary of War in 1839, and in 1845 was made Pay- ; 
master-General. He had, however, incurred great hostility by his favorable treat- 

656 ■ ■ 

































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■ 





























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■ 




















































































THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 


657 

ment of the Roman Catholics, and in 1847 he failed to be re-elected to Parliament. 
He now devoted himsell to his “History of England from the Accession of James II,” 
at which he labored until his death. He completed four volumes, bringing the 
story down to the death of Queen Mary in 1695, an d had prepared notes for the 
fifth, which was afterward published in this incomplete form by his sister, Lady 
Trevelyan. He was again elected to Parliament, and was raised to the peerage in 
1857 ; but he took no further part in public affairs. 

Macaulay s poems, while they were formerly much read, and compare favor¬ 
ably with the work of many famous writers of verse, are so far outshone by his 
prose that they have dropped out of public attention. No other book of the century 
was received with enthusiasm equal to that which greeted the “ History.” Within a 
generation after its appearance more than a hundred and forty thousand copies 
of the “ History” have been sold in the United Kingdom alone. No history ever 
had such a sale in America, and it was translated into almost every European 
language. The author received a hundred thousand dollars as part of his returns 
for a single year, and certainly it went far to deserve its reception. 

It is what a history ought to be,—a history of the people. It is written in a 
style of great clearness, force, and eloquence ; and the scenes he describes he 
places, by the vividness of his portrayal, directly before your eyes. You see them 
and feel them too. The third chapter of this great work, wherein he describes 
the advance of the people, for the last three centuries, from ignorance to knowl¬ 
edge, from barbarism to civilization, from serfdom to freedom, should be read by 
all,—especially by those elderly gentlemen whose chief delight is to praise the 
“good old times.” 

With all its great merits it has its imperfections, of course, as its author was 
subject to like passions and infirmities with other men. He has been accused of 
partiality and exaggeration, and of gratifying his passion for epigram at the expense 
of truth; and it must be acknowledged that his views are sometimes biased (and 
whose are not ?) by personal antipathies : such as his description of Scotland; his 
account of the massacre of Glencoe ; his delineation of the character of the Eng¬ 
lish Puritans and the Scotch Covenanters ; and especially his portraiture of William 
Penn. 

It must always be a matter of supreme regret that to Macaulay’s masterly 
power of making "the scenes of the past spring again into life before the mind of 
the reader, he did not join that respect for the truth of history that would have 
cleared him from the accusation that he preferred to sacrifice the facts of the case 
with which he had to deal rather than to mar the beauty of a rounded period. 

In the “ Essays ” all his excellences appear, while his failures as a historian 
can not frequently mar his work. His reviews of Hallam’s “ Constitutional His¬ 
tory,” and of the memoirs of Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, Sir Robert Walpole, 
Sir William Temple, Sir Walter Raleigh, etc., contain a series of brilliant and copi¬ 
ous historical retrospects unequaled in our literature. His eloquent^ papers on 
Lord Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Horace Walpole’s Letters, Boswell’s Johnson, 
Addison’s Memoirs, and other philosophical and literary subjects, are also.of first- 
rate excellence. Whatever topic he takes up he fairly exhausts : nothing is left to 
the imagination, and the most ample curiosity is gratified. 

42 




658 


THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 




For many years he held a social position which has been enjoyed by very few 
Englishmen. One can not wonder that he grew to be something of an autocrat; 
not, perhaps, after the order of Samuel Johnson, but something like it neverthe¬ 
less. His positive way of expressing his views is well indicated in the remark of a 
great contemporary: “ I wish I could be as sure of anything as Tom Macaulay is 
of everything.” 

He delighted in liberal giving, and used the great income, which was the fruit 
of his own genius, in helping everyone who had the shadow of a claim upon him 
He was particularly munificent in bestowing pecuniary aid upon any needy author, 
and if he was sometimes imposed upon he was rather amused than chagrined. 

In 1859 the great man was laid to rest in the poets’ corner in Westminster 
Abbey. The affection of his family and friends amounted almost to idolatry, and 
few even of the famous men whose earthly remains keep company with his have 
better deserved a lasting renown. 





FALLACIOUS DISTRUST OF LIBERTY. 
From the “Essay on Milton.” 


RIOSTO tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, 
by some mysterious law of her nature, was 
condemned to appear at certain seasons 
in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those 
who injured her during the period of her disguise 
were forever excluded from participation in the 
blessings which she bestowed. But to those who, 
in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and pro¬ 
tected her, she afterward revealed herself in the 
beautiful and celestial form which was natural to 
her, accompanied their steps, granted all their 
wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them 
happy in love and victorious in war. Such a 
spirit is Liberty. At times she takes the form of a 
hateful reptile. She growls, she hisses, she stings. 
But woe to those who in disgust shall venture to 
crush her! And happy are those who, having 
dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful 
shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the 
time of her beauty and her glory. 

There is only one cure for the evils which newly- 
acquired freedom produces—and that cure is free¬ 


dom ! When a prisoner leaves his cell, he can 
not bear the light of day ; he is unable to discrim¬ 
inate colors or to recognize faces. But the 
remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, 
but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The 
blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and 
bewilder nations which have become half blind in 
the house of bondage. But Jet them gaze on, and 
they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years - 
men learn to reason. The extreme violence of 
opinion subsides. Hostile theories correct each 
other. The scattered elements of truth cease to con¬ 
flict, and begin to coalesce. And at length a system 
of justice and order is educed out of the chaos. 

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of 
laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no 
people ought to be free till they are fit to use their 
freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the 
old story, who resolved not to go into the water 
until he had learned to swim ! If men are to wait 
for liberty till they become wise and good in 
slavery, they may indeed wait forever. 



i 






















THOMAS BABINGTON M VCAULAY. 



JOHN HAMPDEN. 


From the Edinburgh Review. 


E had indeed left none his like behind him. 
There still remained, indeed, in his party 
many acute intellects, many eloquent 
tongues, many brave and honest hearts. There 
still remained a rugged and clownish soldier, half 
fanatic, half buffoon, whose talents, discerned as 
yet by only one penetrating eye, were equal to all 
the highest duties of the soldier and the prince. 
But in Hampden, and in Hampden alone, were 
united all the qualities which at such a crisis 
were necessary to save the State—the valor and 
energy of Cromwell, the discernment and elo¬ 
quence of Vane, the human moderation of Man¬ 
chester, the stern integrity of Hale, the ardent 
public spirit of Sydney. 

Others might possess all the qualities which 
were necessary to save the popular party in the 
crisis of danger; Hampden alone had both the 



power and the inclination to restrain its excesses 
in the hour of triumph. Others could conquer; 
he alone could reconcile. A heart as bold as his 
brought up the cuirassiers who turned the tide of 
battle on Marston Moor. As skilful an eye as 
his watched the Scotch army descending from the 
heights over Dunbar. But it was when to the 
sullen tyranny of Laud and Charles had succeeded 
the fierce conflict of sects and factions, ambitious 
of ascendancy and burning for revenge; it was 
when the vices and ignorance which the old tyr¬ 
anny had generated threatened the new freedom 
with destruction, that England missed the so¬ 
briety, the self-command, the perfect soundness 
of judgment, the perfect, rectitude of intention, 
to which the history of revolution furnishes no 
parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington 
alone. 


- , *OyO> t - - 

THE PURITANS. 


E would first speak of the Puritans, the most 
remarkable body of men, perhaps, which 
the world has ever produced. 

Those who roused the people to resistance— 
who directed their measures through a long series 
of eventful years; who formed, out of the most 
unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe 
had even seen ; who trampled down king, church, 
and aristocracy; who, in the short intervals of 
domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name 
of England terrible to every nation on the face of 
the earth—were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their 
absurdities were mere external badges, like the 
signs of freemasonry or the dresses of friars. We 
regret that these badges were not more attractive; 
we regret that a body, to whose courage and 
talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations, 
had not the lofty elegance which distinguished 
some of the adherents of Charles I, or the easy 
good-breeding for which the court of Charles II 
was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, 
we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the 
specious caskets which contain only the Death’s 


head and the Fool’s head, and fix our choice on. 
the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. 

The Puritans were men whose minds had de¬ 
rived a peculiar character from the daily contem¬ 
plation of superior beings and eternal interests. 
Not content with acknowledging, in general 
terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually 
ascribed every event to the will of the Great 
Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for 
whose inspection nothing was too minute. To 
know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with 
them the great end of existence. They rejected 
with contempt the ceremonious homage which 
other sects substituted for the pure worship of the 
soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of 
the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired 
to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to 
commune with him face to face. Hence origi¬ 
nated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. 
The difference between the greatest and meanest 
of mankind seemed to vanish when compared 
with the boundless interval which separated the 
whole race from Him on whom their own eyes 

























66o 


THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 


were constantly fixed. They recognized no title 
to superiority but His favor; and, confident of 
that favor, they despised all the accomplishments 
and all the dignities of the world. If they were 
unacquainted with the works of philosophers and 
poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of 
God; if their names were not found in the 
registers of heralds, they felt assured that they 
were recorded in the Book of Life ; if their steps 
were not accompanied by a splendid train of 
menials, legions of ministering angels had charge 
over them. Their palaces were houses not made 
with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which 
should never fade away. On the rich and the 
eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down 
with contempt; for they esteemed themselves 
rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in 
a more sublime language,—nobles by the right of 
an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition 
of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them 


was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible 
importance belonged,—on whose slightest ac¬ 
tions the spirits of light and darkness looked with 
anxious interest,—who had been destined, before 
heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity 
which should continue when heaven and earth 
should have passed away. Events which short¬ 
sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had 
been ordained on his account. For his sake em¬ 
pires had risen and flourished and decayed ; for 
his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by 
the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the 
prophet. He had been rescued by no common 
deliverer from the grasp of no common foe; he 
had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar 
agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It 
was for him that the sun had been darkened, that 
the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, 
that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of 
her expiring God ! 


——•o-O’O*' 


BUNYAN’S PILGRIM’S PROGRESS. 


||r7g|lHE characteristic peculiarity of the “ Pil- 
a.B grim’s Progress” is, that it is the only 
work of its kind which possesses a strong 
human interest. Other allegories only amuse the 
fancy. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by 
many thousands with tears. There are some good 
allegories in Johnson’s works, and some of still 
higher merit by Addison. In these performances 
there is, perhaps, as much wit and ingenuity as 
in the “ Pilgrim’s Progress.” But the pleasure 
which is produced by the Vision of Mirza, or 
the Vision of Theodore, the genealogy of Wit, 
or the contest between Rest and Labor, is ex¬ 
actly similar to the pleasure which we derive 
from one of Cowley’s odes, or from a canto of 
“ Hudibras.” It is a pleasure which belongs wholly 
to the understanding, and in which the feelings 
have no part whatever. Nay, even Spenser him¬ 
self, though assuredly one of the greatest poets 
that ever lived, could not succeed in the attempt 
to make allegory interesting. It was in vain that 
he lavished the riches of his mind on the House 
of Pride and the House of Temperance. One 
unpardonable fault—the fault of tediousness— 


pervades the whole of the “ Faerie Queen.” We 
become sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly 
Sins, and long for the society of plain men and 
women. Of the persons who read the first canto, 
not one in ten reaches the end of the first book, 
and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end of 
the poem. Very few and very weary are those 
who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. If 
the last six books, which are said to have been 
destroyed in Ireland, had been preserved, we 
doubt whether any heart less stout than that of a 
commentator would have held out to the end. 

It is not so with the “ Pilgrim’s Progress.” 
That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration 
from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those 
who are too simple to admire it. Doctor Johnson 
—all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, 
as he said, to read books through—made an ex¬ 
ception in favor of the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” That 
work, he said, was one of the two or three works 
which he wished longer. It was by no common 
merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise 
like this from the most pedantic of critics and the 
most bigoted of tories. In the wildest parts of 










THOMAS BABIN GTON MACAULAY. 


661 


Scotland the “ Pilgrim’s Progress” is the delight 
of the peasantry. In every nursery the “ Pil¬ 
grim’s Progress” is a greater favorite than “ Jack 
the Giant-Killer.” Every reader knows the 
straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road 
in which he has gone backward and forward a hun¬ 
dred times. This is the highest miracle of genius, 
—that things which are not should be as though 
they were; that the imaginations of one mind 
should become the personal recollections of an¬ 
other. And this miracle the tinker has wrought. 
There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, 
no turnstile, with which we are not perfectly ac¬ 
quainted. The wicket-gate and the desolate 
swamp which separates it from the City of De¬ 
struction ; the long line of road, as straight as a 
rule can make it; the Interpreter’s house and all 
its fair shows; the prisoner in the iron cage; the 
palace, at the doors of which armed men kept 
guard, and on the battlements of which walked 
persons clothed all in gold ; the cross and the 
sepulcher ; the steep hill and the pleasant arbor ; 
the stately front of the House Beautiful by the 
wayside; the low green Valley of Humiliation, 
rich with grass and covered with flocks,—are all 
as well known to us as the sights of our own 
street. Then we come to the narrow place where 
Apollyon strode right across the whole breadth of 
the way, to stop the journey of Christian, and 
where, afterward, the pillar was set up to testify 
how bravely the pilgrim had fought the good 
fight. As we advance, the valley becomes deeper 
and deeper. The shade of the precipices on both 
sides falls blacker and blacker. The clouds gather 
overhead. Doleful voices, the clanking of chains, 
and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are 
heard through the darkness. The way, hardly 
discernible in gloom, runs close by the mouth of 
the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, its 
noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes, to terrify 
the adventurer. Thence he goes on, amidst the 


snares and pitfalls, with the mangled bodies of 
those who have perished lying in the ditch by his 
side. At the end of the long dark valley, he 
passes the dens in which the old giants dwelt, 
amidst the bones and ashes of those whom they 
had slain. . . . 

The style of Bunyan is delightful to every 
reader, and invaluable as a study to every person 
who wishes to obtain a wide command over the 
English language. The vocabulary is the vocabu¬ 
lary of the common people. There is not an ex¬ 
pression, if we except a few technical terms of 
theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. 
We have observed several pages which do not con¬ 
tain a single word of more than two syllables. 
Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant 
to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehe¬ 
ment exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every 
purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine,, 
this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working¬ 
men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book 
in our literature on which we could so readily 
stake the fame of the old unpolluted English lan¬ 
guage; no book which shows so well how rich that 
language is in its own proper wealth, and how 
little it has been improved by all that it has bor¬ 
rowed. 

Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he 
dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear 
of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, 
we suppose Lord Roscommon’s “ Essay on Trans¬ 
lated Verse,” and the Duke of Buckinghamshire’s 
“ Essay on Poetry,” appeared to be compositions 
infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching 
tinker. We live in better times; and we are not 
afraid to say that, though there were many clever 
men in England during the latter half of the 
seventeenth century, there were only two great 
creative minds. One of those minds produced 
the “ Paradise Lost” ; the other, the “ Pilgrim’s 
Progress. ’ ’ t 





JOHN BRIGHT. 

THE QUAKER STATESMAN. 

O true American can fail to be interested in the great Englishman 
who, by the magic of his eloquence and the power of his name, 
did so much to retain for us the sympathy of the working-classes 
of his country during our civil war. John Bright is the English 
statesman who, more than any other, has demonstrated that in 
high places in the government, personal honor, absolute integrity, 
and open candor, are the best rules of conduct. He never made 
a “deal” to secure office, or found it necessary to sacrifice his individual sense of 
right to the exigencies of the public service. He was by nature a democrat, and 
had full faith in popular feeling as opposed to the aristocracy. His public life 
was devoted to temperance, the cause of peace, the removal of the burdens 
imposed by the corn-laws upon the English working-classes, and to the exten¬ 
sion and protection of popular rights. 

Born in 1811, the son of a prosperous manufacturer of Rochdale, he was a 
member of the Society of Friends, and consistently advocated its principles 
throughout his life. About 1839 he formed the intimate friendship of Richard 
Cobden and joined in the anti-corn-law agitation, whose final victory was due to 
Bright only in a less degree than to Cobden. He entered Parliament in 1843, and 
continued a member for nearly forty years. He had naturally an ungraceful man¬ 
ner and a bad delivery, but his ready speech and terrible earnestness overcame all 
obstacles and made him one of the most effective orators of his time. “ He is 
endowed,” said a London paper during the Reform Bill agitation of 1866, “with a 
voice that can discourse most eloquent music, and with a speech that can equally 
sound the depths of pathos or scale the heights of indignation,” and the Times 
declared that “ no orator of the century has stirred the heart of the country in so 
short a time, or so effectually, by his own unaided intellect.” The compelling force 
of his sense of personal honor is well illustrated in his leaving the Gladstone Cabi¬ 
net in 1882 on account of the bombardment of Alexandria, and Mr. Gladstone, 
while radically differing from him, has declared this to be the action of all his life 
most deserving of honor. 

Mr. Bright did not follow Gladstone in his advocacy of home rule for Ire¬ 
land, but believed that policy to be contrary to the interests, not only of England, 
but of Ireland as well. He died in 1889, and perhaps no more fitting eulogium 
could be pronounced upon his life and labors than to say of them, as did the Lon- 

662 


























WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 


JOHN BRIGHT. 


I 







3ENJAMIN DISRAELI. WILLIAM Pin, EARL 01 CHATHAM. 

ENGLISH STATESMEN IN LITERATURE. 

















































































JOHN BRIGHT. 


663 


don Spectator of his speech on Ireland in 1868, that it “did more to draw the 
noblest men ol all parties nearer to each other than long years of discussion 
had effected before.” Higher praise could no man have than that he was an 
instrument in bringing together the conflicting opinions of his countrymen; helping 
right-minded men to see the real truth which so often lies midway between the 
partial views of shallower thinkers. This is the praise that belongs to the great 
Quaker Statesman of England. 



FROM THE SPEECH ON THE CORN-LAWS. 


T MUST not be supposed, because I wish 
to represent the interest of the many, that 
I am hostile to the interest of the few. 
But is it not perfectly certain that if the founda¬ 
tion of the most magnificent building be destroyed 
and undermined, the whole fabric itself is in 
danger? Is it not certain, also, that the vast 
body of the people who form the foundation of 
the social fabric, if they are suffering, if they are 
trampled upon, if they are degraded, if they are 
discontented, if “ their hands are against every 
man, and every man’s hands are against them,” 
if they do not flourish as well, reasonably speaking, 
as the classes who are above them, because they 
are richer and more powerful,—then are those 
classes as much in danger as the working-classes 
themselves? 

There never was a revolution in any country 
which destroyed the great body of the people. 
There have been convulsions of a most dire char¬ 
acter, which have overturned old-fashioned mon¬ 
archies and have hurled thrones and scepters to 
the dust. There have been revolutions which 
have brought down most powerful aristocracies, 
and swept them from the face of the earth forever; 
but never was there a revolution yet which de¬ 
stroyed the people. And whatever may come as 
the consequence of the state of things in this 
country, of this we may rest assured: that the 
common people, that the great bulk of our coun¬ 
trymen, will remain and survive the shock, though 
it may be that the Crown, and the aristocracy, and 
the Church may be leveled with the dust, and rise 
no more. In seeking to represent the working- 



classes, and in standing up for their rights and 
liberties, I hold that I am also defending the rights 
and liberties of the middle and richer classes of 
society. Doing justice to one class can not inflict 
injustice on any other class, and “justice and 
impartiality to all ” is what we all have a right to 
from government. And we have a right to clamor ; 
and so long as I have breath, so long will I clamor 
against the oppression which I see to exist, and in 

favor of the rights of the great body of the people. 

*••••••• 

I have seen the emblems and symbols of afflic¬ 
tion such as I did not expect to see in this city. 
Ay ! and I have seen those little children who at 
not a distant day will be the men and women of 
this city of Durham ; I have seen their poor little 
wan faces and anxious looks, as if the furrows of 
old age were coming upon them before they have 
escaped from the age of childhood. I have seen 
all this in this city, and I have seen far more in 
the neighborhood from which I have come. You 
have seen, in all probability, people from my 
neighborhood walking your streets and begging 
for that bread which the corn-laws would not 
allow them to earn. 

“Bread-taxed weaver, all can see 
What the tax hath done for thee, 

And thy children, vilely led, 

Singing hymns for shameful bread, 

Till the stones of every street 
Know their little naked feet.” 

This is what the corn-law does for the weavers 
of my neighborhood, and for the weavers and 
artisans of yours. 









664 


JOHN BRIGHT. 


FROM THE SPEECH ON INCENDIARISM IN IRELAND (1844). 


S T|j]HE great and all-present evil of the rural 
Jg districts is this: you have too many 
people for the work to be done. And 
you, the landed proprietors, are alone responsible 
for this state of things; and, to speak honestly, I 
believe many of you know it. I have been charged 
with saying out-of-doors that this House is a club 
of landowners legislating for landowners. If I 
had not said it, the public must long ago have 
found out that fact. My honorable friend, the 
member for Stockport, on one occasion proposed 
that before you passed a law to raise the price 
of bread, you should consider how far you had 
the power to raise the rates of wages. What 
do you say to that? You said that the laborers 
did not understand political economy, or they 
would not apply to Parliament to raise wages; 
that Parliament could not raise wages. And 
yet the very next thing you did was to pass a 
law to raise the price of produce of your own land, 
at the expense of the very class whose wages you 
confessed your inability to increase. 

What is the condition of the county of Suffolk? 
Is it not notorious that the rents are as high as 
they were fifty years ago, and probably much 
higher? But the return for the farmer’s capital is 
much lower, and the condition of the laborer is 
very much worse. The farmers are subject to the 
laws of competition, and rents are thereby raised 
from time to time, so as to keep their profits down 
to the lowest point, and the laborers, by the com¬ 
petition amongst them, are reduced to the point 
below which life can not be maintained. Your 
tenants and laborers are being devoured by this 
excessive competition, while you, their magnani¬ 
mous landlords, shelter yourselves from all com¬ 
petition by the corn-law yourselves have 
passed, and make the competition of all other 
classes serve still more to swell your rentals. It 
was for this object the corn-law was passed, and 
yet in the face of your countrymen you dare call 
it a law for the protection of native industry. 

• ••••••• 

Again, a rural police is kept up by the gentry; 
the farmers say for the sole use of watching game 


and frightening poachers, for which formerly they 
had to pay watchers. Is this true, or is it not ? I 
say, then, you care everything for the rights—and 
for something beyond the rights—of your own 
property, but you are oblivious to its duties. How 
many lives have been sacrificed during the year to, 
the childish infatuation of preserving game ? The 
noble lord, the member for North Lancashire, 
could tell of a gamekeeper killed in an affray on 
his father’s estate in that county. For the offense 
one man was hanged, and four men are now on 
their way to penal colonies. Six families are thus 
deprived of husband and father, that this wretched 
system of game-preserving may be continued in a 
country densely peopled as this. The Marquis of 
Normanby’s gamekeeper has been murdered also, 
and the poacher who shot him only escaped death 
by the intervention of the Home Secretary. At 
Godaiming, in Surrey, a gamekeeper has been 
murdered; and at Buckhill, in Buckinghamshire, 
a person has recently been killed in a poaching 
affray. This insane system is the cause of a fearful 
loss of life; it tends to the ruin of your tenantry, 
and is the fruitful cause of the demoralization of 
the peasantry. But you are caring for the rights 
of property; for its most obvious duties you have 
no concern. With such a policy, what can you 
expect but that which is now passing before 
you ? 

It is the remark of a beautiful writer that “ to 
have known nothing but misery is the most por¬ 
tentous condition under which human nature can 
start on its course. ’ ’ Has your agricultural laborer 
ever known anything but misery ? He is born in 
a miserable hovel, which in mockery is termed a 
house or a home; he is reared in penury; he 
passes a life of hopeless and unrequited toil, and 
the jail or the union house is before him as the 
only asylum on this side of the pauper’s grave. Is 
this the result of your protection to native indus¬ 
try ? Have you cared for the laborer till, from a 
home of comfort, he has but a hovel for shelter, 
and have you cherished him into starvation and 
rags? I tell you what your boasted protection is— 
it is a protection of native idleness at the expense 
of the impoverishment of native industry. 










WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

THE “ GRAND OLD MAN ” OF ENGLISH POLITICS. 

EW other men have filled so large a place, both in politics and in 
literature, as the aged man who has for more than half a century 
been a leading figure in the English House of Commons, and has 
found time, amidst the absorbing occupations of a Prime Minister, 
and in the intervals of political campaigns, to write learned books 
upon theology and critical essays on Homeric literature. Few 
men have so well deserved the title “ Statesman in Literature ” ; 
perhaps no other great statesman has chosen the same literary field. 

Gladstone is the fourth son of a wealthy Liverpool merchant, and was born in 
that city in 1809. He distinguished himself at Oxford, where he took the highest 
honors, and where he was the most remarkable graduate of his generation. 

From the university Mr. Gladstone carried away two passions—for Greek lit¬ 
erature and for Christian theology. He entered Parliament almost immediately 
after leaving college, and became a member of Sir Robert Peel’s government, as 
Under Secretary for Colonial Affairs, in 1834. The government being defeated 
the following year, he retired from office, to come in again when Sir Robert 
formed another government in 1841. 

He early distinguished himself by financial skill and knowledge of commercial 
affairs. He supported Sir Robert Peel in the repeal of the corn-laws in 1846, and 
opposed with all his strength the Crimean War and the Chinese War of 1857. 

Gladstone’s gradual change from the Tory to the Liberal party, his fierce 
advocacy of the union of Church and State in his early career, and his later sup¬ 
port of the bill which disestablished the Irish Church, and the change of front which 
made him in his last years a supporter of home rule for Ireland, have success¬ 
ively astonished the world. In each case he was accused of inconstancy, if not of 
treachery. He is one of the few great men who have been able and willing, with 
the progress of the times, to change their minds and to reverse their positions. 

Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister in 1868, and was one of the most popu¬ 
lar and influential that ever ruled over the English people. For more than thirty 
years he was at the head of the Liberals, while Disraeli led the Conservatives ; 
and the contests under these two masters of parliamentary tactics were sometimes 
amongst the most important and exciting in the history of government by assem¬ 
blies. 

665 































666 


WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 


The government of Ireland, the extension of the elective franchise, and the 
multitude of questions arising out of the complicated colonial and foreign relations 
of England, furnished the bones of contention for the two parties, causing the two 
great leaders to succeed each other as Prime Minister at almost regular intervals. 

Mr. Gladstone has now retired from official life, but his interest in public 
affairs has not abated, and upon every question of State policy which involves the 
national honor the voice of the old man is still heard, speaking with no uncertain 
sound, arousing the consciences of his countrymen as no other voice can do. 

Mr. Gladstone’s principal books are: “The State, in its Relations with the* 
Church,” his “ Chapter of Autobiography,” “ Church Principles Considered in Their 
Results,” “Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age,” “The Gods and Men of the 
Heroic Age,” and “ Homeric Synchronisms.” Part of his numerous reviews and 
contributions to periodicals have been collected in seven volumes, under the title 
“Gleanings of Past Years.” Gladstone’s fame, however, will rest, not on his 
theology nor his scholarship, but upon his power as a leader of men. 

He is considered the greatest of British financiers, and as an orator in the 
House of Commons had no equal except John Bright. Of his speech on the 
Budget of i860, the London Quarterly Review declares: “We find ourselves in 
the enchanted region of pure Gladstonism—that terrible combination of relentless 
logic and dauntless imagination. We soar into the empyrean of finance. Every¬ 
thing is on a colossal scale of grandeur—all-embracing free trade, abysses of deficit, 
and mountains of income tax.” 

Mr. Gladstone’s home at Hawarden Castle is visited by great numbers of 
tourists, and the public interest in his life, in his favorite exercise of chopping down 
trees in his forest, and in everything concerning him or his family, extends not 
only throughout England, but to every corner of the civilized world. 



ANTICIPATIONS FOR THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
From “ Church Principles Considered in Their Results.” 


ND here I close this interview of the relig¬ 
ious position of the Church of England 
under the circumstances of the day 
[1840] : of course not venturing to assume that 
these pages can effect in any degree the purpose 
with which they are written, of contributing to 
her security and peace; but yet full of the most 
cheerful anticipations of her destiny, and without 
the remotest fear either of schism among her chil¬ 
dren, or of any permanent oppression from the 
State, whatever may befall the State herself. She 
has endured for ten years, not only without essen¬ 
tial injury, but with a decided and progressive 
growth in her general influence as well as in her 


individual vigor, the ordeal of public discussion, 
and the brunt of many hostile attacks, in a time 
of great agitation and disquietude, and of im¬ 
mense political changes. There was a period 
when her children felt no serious alarms for her 
safety : and then she was in serious peril. Of 
late their apprehensions have been violently and 
constantly excited ; but her dangers have dimin¬ 
ished: so poor a thing, at best, is human solici¬ 
tude. Yes, if we may put any trust in the signs 
that are within her and upon her—if we may at 
all rely upon the results of the patient and delib¬ 
erate thought of many minds, upon the consent¬ 
ing testimony of foes and friends—the hand of her 























WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 


667 


Lord is over her for good, to make her more and 
more a temple of His spirit and an organ of His 
will. Surely He will breathe into her anew, and 
more and more, the breath of life, and will raise 
up in her abundantly power in the midst of weak¬ 
ness, and the sense of power in the midst of the 
sense of weakness—of weakness in so far as she 
is an earthen vessel; of power inasmuch as He is 


a heavenly treasure abiding therein. The might 
that none can withstand, the wisdom that none 
can pierce, the love that none can fathom, the 
revelation of truth whose light faileth not, the 
promise that never can be broken—those are the 
pillars of her strength whereon she rests, we may 
trust, not more conspicuous by their height than 
secure upon their deep foundations. 



Gladstone’s Study. 


SOME AFTERTHOUGHTS. 


From “A Chapter of Autobiography.” 


BELIEVE that the foregoing passages de¬ 
scribe fairly, if succinctly, the main 
propositions of tf The State in its Rela¬ 
tions with the Church,” so far as the book bears 
upon the present controversy. They bound me 
hand and foot; they hemmed me in on every side. 
My opinion of the Established Church of Ireland 
is now the direct opposite of what it was then. I 
then thought it reconcilable with civil and 
national justice ; I now think the maintenance of 
it grossly unjust. I then thought its action was 



favorable to the interests of the religion which it 
teaches; I now believe it to be opposed to them. 

• ••••••* 

An establishment that does its work in much, 
and has the hope and likelihood of doing it in 
more; an establishment that has a broad and liv¬ 
ing way open to it into the hearts of the people; 
an establishment that can command the services 
of the present by the recollections and traditions 
of a far-reaching past; an establishment able to 
appeal to the active zeal of the greater portion of 

























































































































































































668 


WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 


the people and to the respect or scruples of almost 
the whole; whose children dwell chiefly on her 
actual living work and service, and whose adver¬ 
saries—if she have them—are in the main con¬ 
tent to believe that there will be a future for them 
and their opinion—such an establishment should 
surely be maintained. 

But an establishment that neither does nor has 
the hope of doing work except for a few—and 
those few the portion of the community whose 
claim to public aid is the smallest of all; an estab¬ 
lishment severed from the mass of the people by 
an impassable gulf, and by a wall of brass; an 


establishment whose good offices, could she offer 
them, would be intercepted by a long, unbroken 
chain of painful and shameful recollections; an 
establishment leaning for support upon the extrane¬ 
ous aid of a State, which becomes discredited with 
the people by the very act of lending it—such 
an establishment will do well for its own sake, and 
for the sake of its creed, to divest itself as soon as 
may be of gauds and trappings, and to commence 
a new career, in which, renouncing at once the 
credit and the discredit of the civil sanction, it 
shall seek its strength from within, and put a fear¬ 
less trust in the message that it bears. 




AN ESTIMATE OF MACAULAY. 


From “Gleaning 

walHE truth is that Macaulay was not only 
accustomed, like many more of us, to go 
out hobby-riding, but from the portentous 
vigor of the animal he mounted was liable more 
than the most of us to be run away with. His 
merit is that he could keep his seat in the 
wildest steeplechase ; but as the object in view is 
arbitrarily chosen, so it is reached by cutting up 
the fields, spoiling the crops, and spoiling or 
breaking down the fences needful to secure for 
labor its profit, and to man at large the full enjoy¬ 
ment of the fruits of the earth. Such is the over¬ 
powering glow of color, such is the fascination of 
the grouping in the first sketches which he draws, 
that when he has grown hot upon his work he 
seems to lose all sense of the restraints of fact and 
the laws of moderation; he vents the strangest 
paradoxes, sets up the most violent caricatures, 
and handles the false weight and measure as effect¬ 
ively as if he did it knowingly. A man so able 
and so upright is never indeed wholly wrong. He 
never for a moment consciously pursues anything 
but the truth. But truth depends, above all, on 
proportion and relation. The preterhuman vivid¬ 
ness with which Macaulay sees his object, abso¬ 
lutely casts a shadow upon what lies around ; he 
loses his perspective; and imagination, impelled 
headlong by the strong consciousness of honesty 
in purpose, achieves the work of fraud. All things 


of Past Years.” 

for him stand in violent contrast to one another. 
For the shadows, the gradations, the middle and 
transition touches, which make up the bulk of 
human life, character, and action, he has neither 
eye nor taste. They are not taken account of in 
his practice, and they at length die away with the 
ranges of his vision. 

In Macaulay all history is scenic; and philos¬ 
ophy he scarcely seems to touch, except on the 
outer side, where it opens into action. Not only 
does he habitually present facts in forms of beauty, 
but the fashioning of the form predominates over, 
and is injurious to, the absolute and balanced 
presentation of the subject. Macaulay was a. 
master in execution, rather than in what painting 
or music terms expression. He did not fetch 
from the depths, nor soar to the heights; but his- 
power upon the surface was rare and marvelous, 
and it is upon the surface that an ordinary life is- 
passed and that its imagery is found. He min¬ 
gled, then, like Homer, the functions of the poet 
and the chronicler: but what Homer did was due 
to his time; what Macaulay did, to his tempera¬ 
ment. 

The “History” of Macaulay, whatever else it 
may be, is the work not of a journeyman but of a. 
great artist, and a great artist who lavishly bestowed 
upon it all his powers. Such a work, once com¬ 
mitted to the press, can hardly die. It is not be* 












WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 


669 


cause it has been translated into a crowd of lan¬ 
guages, nor because it has been sold in hundreds 
of thousands, that we believe it will live; but be¬ 
cause, however open it may be to criticism, it has 
in it the character of a true and very high work of 
art. 

Whether he will subsist as a standard and su¬ 
preme authority is another question. Wherever 
.and whenever read, he will be read with fascina¬ 
tion, with delight, with wonder. And with copi¬ 
ous instruction too; but also with copious reserve, 


problems. Yet they will obtain, from his marked 
and telling points of view, great aid in solving 
them. We sometimes fancy that ere long there 
will be editions of his works in which his readers 
may be saved from pitfalls by brief, respectful, and 
judicious commentary; and that his great achieve¬ 
ments may be at once commemorated and cor¬ 
rected by men of slower pace, of drier light, and 
of more tranquil, broad-set, and comprehensive 
judgment. For his works are in many respects 
among the prodigies of literature; in some, they 



Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, their Children and Grandchildren. 


with questioning scrutiny, with liberty to reject, 
and with much exercise of that liberty. The con¬ 
temporary mind may in rare cases be taken by 
storm; but posterity, never. The tribunal of the 
present is accessible to influence; that of the 
future is incorrupt. The coming generations will 
not give Macaulay up, but they will probably 
attach much less value than we have done to his 
ipse dixit. They will hardly accept from him his 
net solutions of literary, and still less of historic, 


have never been surpassed. As lights that have 
shone through the whole universe of letters, they 
have made their title to a place in the solid firma¬ 
ment of fame. But the tree is greater and better 
than its fruit; and greater and better yet than the 
works themselves are the lofty aims and concep¬ 
tions, the large heart, the independent, manful 
mind, the pure and noble career, which in this 
biography have disclosed to us the true figure of 
the man who wrote them. 















justin McCarthy. 

THE IRISH PATRIOT AND MAN OF LETTERS. 

N the great conflicts in which the government or misgovernment 
of Ireland has involved every recent British administration, Justin 
McCarthy has, for twenty years, taken an important part. He 
had been the champion of his country long before he entered Par¬ 
liament, and as an editor, and in lectures and speeches both in the 
United Kingdom and in America, he had distinguished himself not 
only by his devotion to the cause of Ireland, but by the intelligence, 
force, and, what was too rare among the Irish leaders, the good judgment which 
he displayed. 

Born in the city of Cork in 1830, the young McCarthy early entered journal¬ 
ism in his native place, but afterward went to Liverpool, and in i860 was attached 
as parliamentary reporter to the staff of the London Morning Star , of which, from 
1864 to 1866, he was editor. He spent a number of years in America, and, return¬ 
ing to his own country, was, in 1879, returned to Parliament from the Irish county 
of Longford. He became one of the trusted lieutenants of Charles Stewart Parnell, 
and after the decline from power and the death of that great leader, he occupied a 
sort of middle position between the two hostile factions into which the Irish party 
separated, and probably did as much as any one man to bring them together. 
McCarthy has written a number of novels, among which are “ Paul Mesie,” 
“ My Enemy’s Daughter,” “ Lady Judith,” “Dear Lady Disdain,” “Miss Misan¬ 
thrope,” “The Comet of a Season,” and “ Camiola.” He has also published a 
large number of essays on political and literary subjects, one volume of which bears 
the title, “Con Amore.” It is in his historical writings, however, that he chiefly 
excels. A number of these essays are included in the volume called “The Epoch 
of Reform,” and he has published a “History of Ireland,” but the work upon 
which his fame seems likely chiefly to rest is his “ History of Our Own Times, from 
the Accession of Queen Victoria,” which has recently been brought down from 
1880 to the present time. This is a most admirable account of the longest reign in 
English history, and excels in the lively pictures it presents of the marvelous 
progress which the great British empire has made within the most wonderful 
sixty years of modern times. There is probably no other book which tells the 
story so completely or so well, or which better deserves the wide circle of readers 
it has had. He published his “Life of Gladstone,” in 1897. 

670 
































JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 


671 


THE WITHDRAWAL FROM CABUL. 


From “A History of Our Own Times.” 


HE withdrawal from Cabul began. It was 
the heart of a cruel winter. The English 
had to make their way through the awful 
pass of Koord Cabul. This stupendous gorge 
runs for some five miles between mountain ranges 
so narrow, lofty, and grim, that in the winter 
season the rays of the sun can hardly pierce its 
darkness even at the noontide. Down the center 
dashed a precipitous mountain torrent, so fiercely 
that the stern frost of that terrible time could not 
stay its course. The snow lay in masses on the 
ground, the rocks and stones that raised their 
heads above the snow in the way of the unfor¬ 
tunate travelers were slippery with frost. Soon 
the white snow began to be stained and splashed 
with blood. Fearful as this Koord Cabul Pass 
was, it was only a degree worse than the road 
which for two whole days the English had to 
traverse to reach it. The army which set out 
from Cabul numbered more than four thousand 
fighting men, of whom Europeans formed but a 
small proportion; and some twelve thousand 
camp-followers of all kinds. There were also 
many women and children. .... 

The winter journey would have been cruel and 
dangerous enough in time of peace; but this 
journey had to be accomplished in the midst of 
something far worse than common war. At every 
step of the road, every opening of the rocks, the 
unhappy crowd of confused and heterogeneous 
fugitives were beset by bands of savage fanatics, 
who with their long guns and long knives were 
murdering all they could reach. It was all the 
way a confused constant battle against a guerilla 
enemy of the most furious and merciless temper, 
who were perfectly familiar with the ground, and 
could rush forward and retire exactly as suited 
their tactics. The English soldiers, weary, weak, 
and crippled by frost, could make but a poor 
fight against the savage Afghans. “ It was no 
longer,” says Sir J. W. Kaye, “a retreating 
army; it was a rabble in chaotic fight.” Men, 
women, and children; horses, ponies, camels; the 
wounded, the dying, the dead ; all crowded to¬ 
gether in almost inextricable confusion among the 



snow and amid the relentless enemies. “The 
massacre,” to quote again from Sir J. W. Kaye, 
“ was fearful in this Koord Cabul Pass. Three 
thousand men are said to have fallen under the 
fire of the enemy, or to have dropped down para¬ 
lyzed and exhausted to be slaughtered by the 
Afghan knives. And amidst these fearful scenes 
of carnage, through a shower of matchlock balls, 
rode English ladies on horseback or in camel 
panniers, sometimes vainly endeavoring to keep 
their children beneath their eyes, and losing them 
in the confusion and bewilderment of the deso¬ 
lating march.” 

Was it for this, then, that our troops had been 
induced to capitulate ? Was this the safe-conduct 
which the Afghan chiefs had promised in return 
for their accepting the ignominious conditions 
imposed on them? Some of the chiefs did exert 
themselves to the utmost to protect the unfortunate 
English. It is not certain what the real wish of 
Akbar Khan may have been. He protested that 
he had no power to restrain the hordes of fanatical 
Ghilzyes, whose own immediate chiefs had not 
authority enough to keep them from murdering 
the English whenever they got a chance. The 
force of some few hundred horsemen whom Akbar 
Khan had with him was utterly incapable, he 
declared, of maintaining order among such a mass 
of infuriated and lawless savages. Akbar Khan 
constantly appeared on the scene during this 
journey of terror. At every opening or break of 
the long straggling flight he and his little band of 
followers showed themselves on the horizon : try¬ 
ing still to protect the English from utter ruin, as 
he declared ; come to gloat over their misery and 
to see that it was surely accomplished, some of the 
unhappy English were ready to believe. Yet his 
presence was something that seemed to give a 
hope of protection. 

Akbar Khan at length startled the English by 
a proposal that the women and children who were 
with the army should be handed over to his 
custody, to be conveyed by him in safety to 
Peshawur. There was nothing better to be done. 
The only modification of his request, or com- 










JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 


672 

mand, that could be obtained, was that the hus¬ 
bands of the married ladies should accompany 
their wives. With this agreement the women 
and children were handed over to the care of this 
dreaded enemy, and Lady Macnaghten had to 
undergo the agony of a personal interview with 
the man whose own hand had killed her husband. 
V\kbar Khan was kindly in his language, and de¬ 
clared to the unhappy widow that he would give 
his right arm to undo, if it were possible, the deed 
that he had done. 

The women and children, and the married men 
whose wives were among this party, were taken 
from the unfortunate army and placed under the 
care of Akbar Khan. As events turned out, it was 
the best thing that could be done. Not one of 
these women and children could have lived 
through the horrors of the journey which lay be¬ 
fore the remnant of what had once been a British 
force. The march was resumed ; new horrors set 
in; new heaps of corpses stained the snow; and 
then Akbar Khan % presented himself, with a fresh 
proposition. In the treaty made at Cabul between 
the English authorities and the Afghan chiefs 
there was an article which stipulated that “the 
English force at Jellalabad shall march for Pesha- 
wur before the Cabul army arrives, and shall not 
delay on the road.” Akbar Khan was especially 
anxious to get rid of the little army at Jellalabad 
at the near end of the Kyber Pass. He desired 
above all things that it should be on the march 
home to India; either that it might be out of his 
way, or that he might have a chance of destroying 
it on its way. It was in great measure as a secur¬ 
ity for its moving that he desired to have the 
women and children under his care. It is not 
likely that he meant any harm to the women and 
children ; it must be remembered that his father 
and many of the women of his family were under 
the control of the British Government as prison¬ 
ers in Hindostan. But he fancied that if he had 
the English women in his hands the army at Jella¬ 
labad could not refuse to obey the conditions set 
down in the article of the treaty. Now that he had 



i 


the women in his power, however, he demanded 
other guarantees, with openly acknowledged 
purpose of keeping these latter until Jellalabad 
should have been evacuated. He demanded that 
General Elphenstone, the commander, with his 
second in command, and also one other officer, 
should hand themselves over to him as hostages. 
He promised if this were done to exert himself 
more than before to restrain the fanatical tribes, 
and also to provide the army in the Koord Cabul 
Pass with provisions. There was nothing for it 
but to submit; and the English general himself 
became, with the women and children, a captive 
in the hands of the inexorable enemy. 

Then the march of the army, without a general, 
went on again. Soon it became the story of a 
general without an army; before long there was 
neither general nor army. It is idle to lengthen 
a tale of mere horrors. The struggling remnant 
of an army entered the Jugdulluk Pass, a dark, 
steep, narrow, ascending path between crags. 
The miserable toilers found that the fanatical im¬ 
placable tribes had barricaded the pass. All was 
over. The army of Cabul was finally extinguished 
in that barricaded pass. It was a trap; the Brit¬ 
ish were taken in it. A few mere fugitives es¬ 
caped from the scene of actual slaughter, and were 
on the road to Jellalabad, where Sale and his little 
army were holding their own. When they were 
within sixteen miles of Jellalabad the number was 
reduced to six. Of these six, five were killed by 
straggling marauders on the way. One man alone 
reached Jellalabad to tell the tale. Literally one 
man, Dr. Brydon, came to Jellalabad out of a 
moving host which had numbered in all some six¬ 
teen thousand when it set out on its march. The 
curious eye will search through history or fiction 
in vain for any picture more thrilling with the sug¬ 
gestions of an awful catastrophe than that of this 
solitary survivor, faint and reeling on his jaded 
horse, as he appeared under the walls of Jellala¬ 
bad, to bear the tidings ot our Thermopylae of 
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